Along with 20 large containers of anti-freeze and other accessories.  Many thanks to our ground works team for unloading them for us in our absence!

400 metres of ground source pipe loop arrives.  More manageable than anticipated.  Its amazing how hard the pipe is, seems difficult to bend into a tighter radius than currently coiled.

Day 4 - picking up pace

All planted!

Setting out the new hedge along the rear (west) boundary of the site.  Fingers crossed it doesn't get buried by the mound!

...and the pile of spoil just kept growing!

Diggers in action!

This digger was not so effective - although 10/10 for effort!  (by the way she is smiling for the camera, not growling - show off!)

Ramping up the pace - double the machinery!

Day 3

Quiet day on site.  Sand arrived for blinding the trenches, ready for the action packed weekend planned!

Day 2 surprises!

Surprise 2


A lump of concrete was discovered about 1meter below finished ground level.  Again near the north boundary.  It looks like it goes laterally across the trenches, so we shall see if it makes an appearance in the next trench when we get far enough along.  We are not sure what it is,  if we can lay the ground source pipe over it, or if we need to remove it first.

Surprise 1


At the front of the site on the north boundary (luckily at the furthest point from the new footprint) we discovered a patch of fill material, consisting of mainly bricks and rubble.  It makes it virtually impossible to retain the sides of the trench, as they fall away in big clumps!

Day 2 progress is quite slow - probably managing to pull about 50 metres a day.  So far about 3 out of 14 '300mm (foot) trenches' have been completed and one of the 1 metre wide lateral trenches.  What we had originally considered as a 5 day job is looking like it is becoming more like 7 days.  We were also met with two surprises today...

And the spoil just kept coming!  This is only about 1/5 of the amount that needs to be stacked here!  It was estimated that each trench was yielding about 10-15 tonnes.


(sand will be piled in the background, near the road)


(bungalow to be demolished after new house complete is on the left)

Day 2 reinforcements, in the form of a dumper!


Having decided yesterday that it was just not possible to stack the soil by the side of the trench we investigated possible places to put it.  It was agreed this would be put at the back of the site over the proposed location of the new footprint.  This leaves space at the front of the site, also on top of the proposed footprint, for the 34 cubic meters (about 60tonnes) of sand we need to blind the trenches and cover the pipe loop with!

Start on site: Day 1 - Pulling trenches

The logistical nightmare of the ground source heatpump ground loops!

The mass of roots, left over from the conifer trees did not make life any easier!

However, the soil just kept coming!  It's amazing how much space it takes up when its out of the ground!


It was agreed there was not enough space to neatly pile the spoil by the side of each trench.


So tomorrow we will implement a different strategy...

The machine of choice...

(you can see the chalk from about half way down the trench)

In theory it sounded simple - one 400 metre loop of 40mm pipe, laid a minimum of 1000mm in the ground (we were advised to go for 1200mm) and at a min 1000mm centres, starting and ending at the heat pump.  The drawing also looked simple but hid the logistical nightmare it was going to turn out to be!


We had ruled out backfilling the trenches as we went, because we needed to lay and pressure test the pipe before we covered it.  So, our plan was to neatly stack the spoil from each trench to one side of the corresponding trench and work sequentially along the trenches (we had decided to ignore the problem of how we would gain access to the trenches to blind them with sand and lay the pipe once all the trenches had been dug!).  To make life a bit easier we had increased the centres of the trenches to 1200mm, which was about the maximum we could easily accommodate on the site.

Removing the trees and clearing the site

Site cleared! View to the west

All the stumps removed.