The Build 5, Days 13 – 26 Sep

See what I did there? It’s the fifth post about The Build, and the post covers 13th-26th September, 2024. Any other way of counting will drive me crazy and probably you too.

In case you’re not convinced? Day 13 is four days after the events on Days 11 and 12. It’s tricky to decide how to count the days for this project. 1) Count only the days stuff is visibly happening? That made it Day 13 on Tuesday 17 September 2024. Or 2) Count calendar days, the easier option. I had to start numbering the posts to be able to keep track of the images as they’re being used.

The day after the first excavator went to another job, I walked to the main gate in Surbiton Court to see what I could see, and discovered the architectural company’s name and details posted at the entry. Note that the that little wall backing the sign was still there that day.

And that afternoon, Tuesday 17 September, a representative of that business (logo on their vehicle) parked in the middle of the great big empty place.

But, let me tell you, just because we in Vista couldn’t see anything happening in the big empty place in front of us, that doesn’t mean nothing was happening.

Another day and another walk, I discovered there was plenty of action down at the front gate.

The new boundary corner peg … between the subdivision and Aveo, I assume …

NBN’s Comm cables have been gathered up into their own ‘banks’ and showing above ground to prevent them being massacred accidentally …

New sewage pipes and other fixtures …

I don’t know what these shade-cloth fences are actually called. I’ve heard them referred to as ‘sediment containment barriers’, a fancy way of saying they’re to stop mud going where it shouldn’t.

Within the green and teal fence, there’s this red and yellow safety fence outlining a deep trench. The trench presumably to house the new sewage plumbing.

One thing that amazed me about the site from this angle, is the amount of vegetation still going strong. There is a flowering azalea in the back corner, and various other shrubs, and even the Grevillea at the front entrance was still there … being outlined by pegs which made me wonder if it was being invited to stay …

The Build 4, Days 11 – 13

Thursday 12 September, day 11 of the build, there were two excavators on site … one that began ripping out concrete in the northern corner to the side of Carinya.

Just visible behind the tree, filling up one of the trucks with chunks and slabs.

The second excavator squated desolate in the upper section apparently suffering a break-down.

The operators here seen washing the great steel animal down, as if thinking they might as well use the down-time for something useful.

A little later they had a repairs truck on site, the doctor coming to see the patient. There can’t have been any resolution because it sat there all through Friday ( day 12) and was left behind when the working machine was carried away at the end of the day by low loader.

Saturday morning it was also taken away.

Leaving just a spare scoop sitting by the side of the access road. And that was that for the week.

The Build, Day 7

The demolitions began with a weeks worth of fencing the whole site as is the normal procedure. So counting working days from then, it’s day 7. My son kindly let me know that the whole construction industry in this country (Australia) uses the same calendar where 9 day working weeks and flexi-days are concerned.

So when I said on Monday nothing is happening, where are they? He said, they’ll be doing something on another site.

Well, they’re back today. At 8.30 AM a huge semi dump truck backed into Carinya’s main street, looking bigger than normal due to the littleness of the houses. That starting time, by the way, is due to the work being in a residential area. Normal construction industry starting times are 6.30 AM, or even 6 AM. An early start makes sense in spring summer and autumn, when temperatures may be over 30 Celsius.

Yesterday, at 35 degrees C (95 Fahrenheit) from about 11 AM here, would’ve been unbearable, with the humidity quite high too. Today temperatures are back in the mid twenties.

A couple of men in orange hi vis shirts unloaded maybe two dozen tires. And it’s only because I saw a clip about an archeological site in the Orkneys being covered with black plastic, with ‘retired’ tires to weight it down, that I realized the tires in the present scene must be to prevent a load of dust and rubble being blown all over the highway.

Sometimes it boggles my mind that old tires are being used for that purpose all over the world. One of the joys of the internet: good ideas spread as fast as bad ones.

They dumped a pile of concrete rubble at the end of the street, next to the mysterious hedge that is still there. All the other vegetation were massacred except the hedge? I need a site informant.

A large front end loader is at work at the lower (eastern) edge of the site, In the elbow on the map, filling that same truck with rubble and broken cement it’s scraping up from–I suspect–the forecourt. I’m going by what I can hear, in this instance.

I need to try and retrieve the map of the area we were all sent a couple of weeks ago … got it!

Well, it’d be better upside down, because that’s the way I’m looking at it and taking photos. I shall endeavor to do magic with various software. I’d like to put on treasure-island-style crosses to indicate where the work is being done. Watch this space.

The Build, Days 1+2

Day two of the demolition stage … a brand spanking new machine is busy taking out the vegetation so carefully nurtured by the gardening crew only a few days ago.

Someone could’ve saved themselves a swag of money, time and useless busy work if they only worked together.

When I watch a machine like that at work, I always wonder whether a couple of men on the ground couldn’t do that work more efficiently.

Chainsawing the shrubs, stacking them on a pile or dragging them to a truck. There aren’t any real trees in that section. How can it be cheaper?

Yes. Don’t worry. That was a rhetorical ‘big world’ question. I realise that by the time an employer pays humans their holiday pays, sickness benefits and super, one driver is cheaper than three laborers.

By ‘big world’ I mean the ESG costs as well as just running a demolition company.

E = environmental; S = social; G = governance … I’m still in the dark about the significance of the last one. You?