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The Essential Guide » Starting / Ground Works to Slab Level / Basements / Drainage » Setting up Your Self Build Site Ready to Start Building Work
This section has not yet received its final editing or checking. It is included here as it may give the reader some useful advice – even in this format.
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“Setting up” the site (new build).
Ok, at last the day is approaching when you actually get to start work! – You may have put months of effort, planning and research into getting to this point, and you can’t wait to get going!
If you have been using this guide to help you as you plan, you should be in a good position now to go on and create your dream home, knowing that you have “covered all the bases” that you needed to before you start, and that you should now be able to build efficiently, and economically and that you are now ready to cope with any eventuality!
What you need to do now is to make sure that start the whole of the “practical” part of the project properly by setting up the site itself in an efficient and logical manner, taking into account not only the things which happen at the start of the job, but which will occur right up to the day that you move in (and even beyond).
Believe it or not, a bad site layout can cost you hundreds, if not thousands of pounds over the duration of an average project. So it’s worth taking a bit of time to come up with a plan for a site layout where everything will be positioned logically and efficiently, so that everything is in its most logical place, and “Double handling”, “waste”, “disruption”, “time wasting” and “unnecessary expense” is kept to a minimum.
How do we plan the site layout?
Drawings:
Start with your drawings. You should by now have copies of full set of drawings. The main one you need now is the site plan showing the position of the house, the driveway position and all the other details of “where things go”. On this plan, mark up the route that the services will take from where they enter the site to the meter box positions or the point where they enter the building. This will often be under the driveway, and down the side of the house.
The rear of the property:
Now consider a time a few months “down the line”, when the main structure has been completed, the scaffold is down, and you want to finish off all the external works and landscaping at the back of the site. – Will you be able to get the machinery round to the rear of the house to carry out the work that will need doing? – If not, you need to think through a few points now:
1) Where should you stockpile excavated materials such as topsoil so that you can get to them when you need them?
2) What work will you need to do with an excavator before you cut off the access to the rear of the property with the new structure?
3) What materials would it be wise to take around the back at an early stage so that you don’t end up barrowing or carrying large quantities of materials from the front of the site, down the side of the building, to the rear? – Or worse still, having to hire a crane to lift something over the house such as a large oil tank.
4) Are there going to be any concrete slabs needed at the rear of the property?- If so would you be better to pour them before you excavate your main foundations so that the delivery wagon can back up to them, thus saving time and money barrowing or pumping concrete?
5) Are you planning to set a caravan of some sort at the back of the site to live in while you work on the project? If so, how will you get it out later, and what services will you need to connect to it to be able to live in it (power / drainage etc)? Will you be installing services to any outbuildings? – Mark any “service routes” to temporary and permanent accommodation at the rear of the property, on your drawings.
Finally regarding the rear of the property, just go through anything else that could affect anything to do with the rear of the property and consider whether or not an action taken early on could save you time and / or money later.
General considerations:
Most Self Build sites in the UK are of a modest size. They will generally be larger than the plots offered by the main developers, but land in the UK is expensive, so in most cases there is not a great deal of “empty space” to play with when it comes to planning your site layout. Therefore, before you start to “plonk” site accommodation cabins, lockup’s, w/c’s etc around the site, you need to think about what is going to be “going on” over the whole of the construction period, and how the positioning of materials, cabins, and lockups will affect the works as a whole.
The main points to consider are:
1) Delivery and Mechanical plant access:
It is very important to try to get an access route from the “entry point” of the site to a position as close to the “point of use” of the materials. Where possible, try and get your storage to be in the same place, fairly close to the “point of use”. This can save time and money later.
The access should, if possible allow a large delivery vehicle to enter the site, unload, and either turnaround or back out easily. The best position for your temporary access is usually along the route your permanent new driveway is going to take. By using this route, you will be able to lay the stone which will eventually be the “Sub Base” of your permanent drive, and use it as your temporary access route.
Later on, once you start the work of constructing the permanent drive, you can simply lay the rest of the stone that you need on top of what has already been laid. This can save you hundreds of pounds worth of wasted stone, and machinery time which you may otherwise use in forming an access which will have no use to you once the main deliveries have all been made.
Bear in mind when you decide on the location of your access route, that it needs to be fairly level if possible. If a fully loaded delivery wagon enters the site and has to drive down a slope to the “off load” point, you may find that once his delivery has been removed and he tries to back up, his wheels will spin and he will be totally stuck! – These wagons are useless at handling these sorts of situations without their loads. – and DON’T depend on the driver to advise you as to whether or not he will be able to “back up a slope” once he has unloaded. – Over the years I have seen numerous “experienced” drivers getting stuck and needing to be pulled out by an excavator. – If there is no excavator to hand you could be in trouble!
Many of the deliveries made to a Self Build site are going to be on large wagons. I, for whatever reason you don’t or can’t provide adequate access, you may find that they have to unload all the materials from a position on the road in front of, or at the side of the site. – This may result in you possibly dropping all the deliveries just over your perimeter fencing, but some distance from where they will be needed (
In the case of concrete deliveries, if they cannot back up to 2 -3 metres from where the concrete is needed this may necessitate the need for “pumping”, which can be costly, or for “barrowing” which can be slow and incur “standing time” charges from the concrete delivery companies (which can also be costly).
Items such as Timber Frame panels are bulky but usually not too heavy. So, although the timber frame erection gang won’t be happy carrying the panels more distance than is absolutely necessary, having them dropped 30 – 40 ft from the building is not the end of the world. You may end up paying for the extra time taken to move the panels, but this would possibly be £50 or so.
Bricks and blocks are a different matter! – If you ask your bricklaying contractor to move around 20,000 bricks and possibly a couple of thousand blocks a greater distance than they are used to, or have priced for, you may find that you end up paying a couple of hundred pounds or more in extra labour costs. – Just because you couldn’t get the waging closer to the workplace.
Other delivered items will cause problems if you can’t get them close to the point of use. Things like heavy steel lintels, trusses, etc.
If you need to lift trusses onto the roof, the further away from the building the crane has to be situated, the larger and therefore the crane may have to be.
2) Proximity of “materials storage” to the new structure:
Once you’ve got the access sorted out you need to decide where the best place is to store everything. Having access to a point which is close to the building does not necessarily mean that you actually keep everything in its most efficient location.
Some of the valuable smaller items will go into a lockup and it’s not usually too critical how far that is from the point of use (as long as it’s within 50ft or so). However if you can get access close to the new structure, try and get the heaviest items as near to where they will be used as possible without causing potential obstructions. – Costs could be incurred if, due to lack of thought you end up carrying any items lengthy distances from their point of storage to point of use.
In cases where storage is not possible in the “ideal” locations, and if the conditions and the layout of the site allow it, you may think about hiring a “fork lift” for a few weeks. This will cost quite a lot of money, but weigh up its cost with the benefits it could bring. If bricklayers spend a full day moving bricks from one place to another before they can start to lay them, your progress will be slowed considerably and you could end up paying 3 or 4 men around £15 / hour for a full day in “extras”. 4 men x £15 x 8 hrs = £480. – If you have to pay that more than once or twice then a fork lift starts to make sense.
3) Access to service routes:
As you choose your access and storage routes and locations, think about the route that any services (temporary or permanent) will be taking. – If you have drawn these routes onto your drawing you can then mark them with spray paint on the ground of the site itself. You will usually want to excavate the service trenches where possible with a mechanical excavator to maximise speed and to keep the cost down. So try and make sure you give adequate clear manoeuvring room either side of the proposed route for the excavator to get in, do its work and get out. This not only applies to electricity water and gas, but also to any drainage excavation routes, either for the main structure of for your temporary accommodation.
5) Minimising waste:
Damage:
If you set your site up correctly you will reduce the waste you create. One major source of waste on Self Build sites is before the materials even reach their “point of use”. If, for example you take delivery of a large load of bricks or blocks which come without pallets (sometimes they will be “shrink wrapped” sometimes not), and you put them straight onto the ground. - You could end up losing literally hundreds of them! - As soon as you get some bad weather, the site can quickly change into a quagmire. Mud can soon be “ankle deep” and will be splashed everywhere by the various delivery trucks and excavation plant. The first 2 layers of bricks or blocks (from the ground up) can easily be ruined. – You could easily lose hundreds of pounds worth of materials this way. NOT ONLY THAT! – If, towards the end of building the main structure you find that because of the wasted bricks, you now need to order extra you may get a shock! – When you ordered those “full loads” of 10,000 or more bricks, you may have paid (for example) £400 / 1000 for them. BUT, if you go need to back to order a further 1000 or 1500, you may find that, especially if they have to come a long way from the manufacturer, you could end up paying twice as much per 1000 to cover the extra haulage costs.
Always put brick and block deliveries onto either pallets or on some sort of “base” to protect them from site damage ( preferably with a sheet of plastic underneath). Cover them where possible to further protect them from site and weather damage and to further reduce waste. – The same idea applies to many other items which are delivered in larger quantities, all of which can be costly to replace.
Storing larger items:
If you can store long lengths of timber and large quantities of any other materials you will usually be able to save money. Delivery costs will not only be reduced if you can get everything delivered at once, but also waste will be reduced. For example, if you can store 20’ lengths as opposed to 10’ lengths of timber, you will reduce the amount of waste. Short lengths of timber will almost always produce one “offcut”, sometimes measuring a significant percentage of its length. If you can get longer delivered, you will still only find that they have one offcut per length, but as an overall percentage, the waste element will be much less.
6) Site cleanliness / safety / security:
It is important to consider all of these factors when you set up your site. Earlier pages of this guide deal with “Health and Safety” on site, and how the “Health and Safety Executive” will require you to give them a plan of how you intend to carry out all of the works. If your site is deemed by them to be unsafe, or contravene the “Construction (Design and Management)” Regulations in any way, they have the power to make you stop work until you correct the problem. These regulations cover security, cleanliness and safety. So giving thought to all these matters at the stage when you initially setting up the site, could save you a lot of “hassle” later.
If you are new to building, the best way can often be just to think logically about everything. Just ask yourself: “How can I keep the site clean, safe and secure in the most efficient manner?” You can also ask for advice from your subcontractors in any areas where you are uncertain. Remember, they are doing this sort of work all day every day, and can often be an excellent source of advice and information. ( Hint: Listen to advice from anyone and everyone, but use your own common sense to make the decisions. Don’t just take anything “The guys on site” say as being 100% correct. – It often is, but sometimes it isn’t!)
7) Scaffolding:
You need to take into consideration the effects that any scaffolding requirements will have on the site as a whole.
Scaffolding:
a) Restricts access:
If you only have a few feet between the sides of the structure and the boundary, your scaffolding may take up the whole of that space, cutting off access to the one part of the property completely for the duration of the time it is on site. Think about the knock on effects this can have, and take actions to make sure progress can be made in areas which the scaffold restricts access to. This may mean taking materials and plant around to an area which is going to be cut off, before the scaffold is erected. It may even mean you need some sort of secure storage in that area.
b) Reduces the number of possibly storage areas:
On a tight site, scaffolding can substantially reduce your options for storing materials. Just bear in mind the fact that it will usually take up a width of around 5 ft all around the structure. This area will be unusable for storage until the scaffold is removed
c) Causes wastage of materials:
Scaffolding quite often creates a “no go area”. This is the area of ground underneath the whole of the scaffolding. Whilst the scaffold is in use, waste tends to build up in this area, especially if it is made harder to access by storage of other materials or site accommodation etc. If you can keep clear access to this area, you may be able to salvage a significant amount of waste dpc, wall ties, bricks, blocks, insulation etc.
8) Temporary accommodation:
Your site cabins will usually include: 1) Steel lockup. 2) W/C. 3) Canteen. 4) Your own living accommodation (if you have chosen to live on site while you build).
Positioning these units on the site will not be as important as getting the access route in the right place or getting materials storage as close to the point of use as possible. If you are tight on space, it is possible to rent one unit which offers part site canteen and part site storage.
Just try and keep these units in a position where they won’t need to be moved until they are taken away, and then make a footpath of some sort to them so that people aren’t traipsing through mud to get to them and then carrying that mud into the building.
You will usually need to provide hot water in the canteen, so either a gas bottle or a temporary electricity supply will normally be required. Gas needs to be kept safe and should be locked away from possible vandalism, but should not be stored within the cabin itself. If you need electricity, you may be able to position the cabins close to your permanent service trench so that you can rig up the connection you need to them, without having to excavate extra trenches. If you do this, bear in mind that you will be excavating trenches which can sometimes end up considerably wider than they are shown of drawings, so keep cables well away from the foundation area.
( Note: If you connect these temporary cabins to the mains electrical supply via a cable in a trench, you should use armoured cable, and lay “warning tape” a few inches above the cable in case any of the excavation works on the site accidently come across it).
In Summary:
There are a lot of things to consider when you start to get the site ready for work to start. The items listed above are to give you a guide, but do not form an exhaustive list. Each site will be different, and offer different “conditions” which will require a unique set of decisions to be made.
As with most parts of any Self Build project, if you use common sense, think ahead, and take into consideration any advice offered by people who work on these sorts of projects all the time, you shouldn’t go far wrong. BUT, just to reiterate:
The Most important areas of site set up are:
1) Adequate and suitable access for any large vehicles which will need to come to the site, from the site boundary to the “point of use” of materials (in other words “the position of the house”). If the site is small, then a suitable “drop off” point should be chosen, which can be reached from a position where the delivery vehicle can be parked.
2) Suitably located storage: As near to the point of use as “practically” and “safely” possible, for the larger items. - And within a reasonable distance (via a “clean” route) for the smaller and more valuable items. Bearing in mind that the once the materials are dropped off by the delivery wagon, you only want to have to handle them ONE TIME, which is when they are taken to be incorporated in the construction. – Try to avoid “double handling” wherever possible
3) Keeping the site safe, secure, reasonably clean, and in a manner that minimises waste.
4) Use you common sense, and think ahead.
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