June 8th - Dug!

Nipped over in the morning to find four men from Walker Groundworks on site. One to drive the digger, one (Gregor, the boss) to supervise, one to drive the tractor / dump trailer for 2 minutes every half-hour (John) and one to lean on a shovel and very occasionally, when prompted by Gregor, push a loose clod of earth into the trench. God knows what it's going to cost me for the four of them!
They'd already completed one end and half a side, and I noted with dismay that the trench wasn't a metre, as I'd expected, but a good five feet deep. Gregor assured me that they'd had to go that deep to find a good hard footing. Quickly recalculated the anount of concrete I'm going to have to buy, adjusting the cost from £1500 to somewhere in the region of £3000 - 3500. Not a happy bunny.

Returned with the boys in the afternnon to find the job completed. Deep all the way around, and the pads for the support columns were a lot wider and a lot messier than I'd expected. Oh, and the 300mm-wide trench along the centre of the foundations is actually 450mm wide, requiring 50% more concrete than it should. Talk about throwing money into a hole!

Still, quite exciting to see the project finally started. No turning back now!