The volume of earth that had to be moved was ridiculously more than what we had imagined, something I couldn’t picture in advance.

Our’s was a gently sloping block, not a very big gradient but from the front to the back there was an elevation difference of about 600mm, back being higher.

Over 40 meters, which is the length of the block, with the naked eye, one couldn’t confidently say if this was a sloping block or not but it was.

Our house plan is also such that it is a bit of a long and narrow house and the bed room at the back is only about 4 meters from the back boundary.

At the time of drawing up plans, the draftsman had mentioned this to me but I hadn’t FULLY understood this.

The options were, either build a house which catered for the variation in land elevation i.e. end up with the back portion of the house with a step up – small split level up or;

Cut the site to make it level i.e. take out the soil from the back part of the block and make the land flat to end up with a common floor level through out the house.

the maths wasn’t difficult but I didn’t do it before the site cut

They say that life is one big series of mistakes in all sorts of fields that you make and learn along the way.

A first time construction project is also full of mistakes that you learn only after it has happened. Those mistakes don’t have to big ones and may not cost you anything but possibly will hurt your ego a little from time to time.

The positive side of those mistakes is that you grow as an individual and learn.

I reflect on what happened at the time.

I was trying to speak to various concreters to get quotes for the slabs and whilst everyone able to quote the slab, no one really wanted to quote the cost for the soil removal after site cut.

They didn’t know the volume and perhaps didn’t know how to calculate it either.

Ideally, I should have worked out the volume of soil before approaching them for a quote, giving them an idea of how many truck lots will have to be taken.

We manage to get an excavation company to do the job

They rock up to the job site with a big tipper truck and an excavator big enough to work through the site at a reasonable pace.

The time they turn up at was 7am sharp. I greatly admire punctual people but in this case their punctuality was giving me stress just because a bus route passes through our street.

Being an inner city suburb, the cars are usually parked on the street and whilst the bus can get through the space between when cars are parked on both sides of the street, a truck is too big and would not let a bus squeeze through.

During peak hour, the bus comes every 10 minutes so they literally had 10 minutes to position the truck, get the excavator off and also then move the truck.

This whole manoeuvre of 10 minutes, felt like an eternity as we didn’t really want to block the traffic during peak hour as we had been warned that bus drivers would report to the authorities and so will the locals resulting in a fine.

Fortunately it was all done without any dramas however should there be any, you want to make sure that the company you hire has got Earthmoving Insurance.