Foundation

These holes are between 2 and 4 meters deep (6 to 12 feet) and filled with concrete. As the ground in this area is soft and clay, it's necessary to support the foundation with such piles to prevent sinking. Actually, I used to rent space in a house about 20 minutes from here where the result of improper building could be easily seen. Due to sinking on the north side of the house, the front door had to be trimmed (and occasionally replaced) as the door frame was constantly shifting to the right. In our case, there are 30 piles.

This is the gravel pad covered with a plastic sheet.

After unprecedented delays on the part of the water dept., the water has finally been connected. This will save me the trouble of having to fill up a 100 liter water tank at the nearby park for mixing concrete.

The frame and rebar seem to be ready for pouring. This week most everyone is off and the weather isn't especially good, so I don't expect it to be poured until next week.

Earth work

 The ground needed to flattened and excess soil had to be removed to make way for the foundation.

The little guy loved the truck so much he wanted to keep it, but I'm afraid a long-term rental would have been out of the question. Though, for just a 24-hour rental it was only 10,500 yen from Japan Rent-a-Car. Very reasonable.

This was the last load. The entrance was too steep and the truck was unable to back in, so each time I had to drive straight into the garden and back up. The process was somewhat tedious as it's not the widest lot.

The rear block wall

Here's the block wall. The final product was 5 blocks high and then stepped to 2 blocks. After I realized where I stepped it from 5 to 2 it was slightly lower and looks as if it's "sagging". It should be easy enough to fix if I can knock out the offending blocks and reseat them. Of course, the contractor noticed the mistake, but didn't care.

The reason the block wall had to be built was the rear north-west corner of the lot was lower and needed to be filled.

For better or worse, a previous laid block wall was unearthed and I decided it wasn't worth the trouble to demolish, so it was "incorporated" into the footing.

 It doesn't seem very wide or deep, but if you dig it out by hand (like me), it's definitely time-consuming and kind of a hassle. What are you gonna do?