Showing posts with label construction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label construction. Show all posts

17 October 2010

Apollo Studio Construction Online

During the construction of my Apollo Studio I wrote a lot of blog articles to keep everyone updated on the progress. Recently I introduced a new website and I copied a lot of these blog articles on there. I just finished all the construction posts. There is a lot to read for you in this menu. Also about how my studio works and all the equipment that is in there. So I would say if you are interested go on and browse through it on a rainy afternoon :) You can find it all here: http://www.synth.nl/studio/construction

28 April 2010

Studio Leak Story Continues :(

After the last repair we really though the leak was fixed. We had several days of rain on a row and no water at all. But then after the third day of rain when I went down in the studio to check there was about a centimeter of water in one of the buckets :( It is not much, but we could easily conclude from that, that the problem still wasn't fixed. So I called my constructor again :( But we also agreed to call in a someone else with a fresh look on things. Last week they opened the alleged problem area again and looked at it together. They both agreed on a solution that was implemented last week.

And here is the result. It looks similar, but they actually burned a much larger piece of material on there now. I really hope this does the trick, because other wise I don't know where to look any more. And we did see result from the last repair, because much less water came out so it must be the right spot I guess. Well we can only hope for the best. For now it is nice weather here so no worries now, but they are expecting rain again next week so we will see then. Fingers crossed :) It is getting really annoying by now. Still no damage until today but inconvenience for sure.

28 October 2009

More Screens in the Apollo Studio

I'm also working on finishing the studio. Since I'm planning to start working more with video I added some more screens. They have HDMI input and can project a 1080p full HD picture. Besides this it is nice to play a video on there while I'm working. I actually did this during the production of my 'OceanoGraphy' album to get in the mood. I watched a lot of Nature Documentaries without sound while I was composing or producing. I also watched some other movies in between when I was resting my ears. I played those movies from an Eminent player. And yes I have them legally ;)

As you probably know we also build a cinema while constructing the new studio. We bought a full HD beamer for that, but we had a beamer in the living room before that. I recently removed that from the ceiling in the living room and mounted it on the ceiling of the studio. It is not HD, but I will be nice to work on multi media projects on that for sure. I need to figure out now though how to hook up all this video stuff to be able to easily switch between it all. But I'm sure I'll find a solution for that.

So how does it all look. Well great I think personally :) And no I don't have everything switched on all the time. The projection screen for the beamer is electric. So I can roll it up and down. I'm still not done in the studio. The next thing to do is get surround sound in there. I will use my old Behringer monitors for this. I have mounting brackets for them already, but need someone to help me out with this. As some of you might have heard before I'm planning to release some music in surround in the future and I want to start experimenting with that soon. I'll keep you updated on this as usual :)

26 June 2009

Building Apollo Studio (Overview)

I know a lot of you followed the construction of my new Apollo studio, but maybe some of you also missed it. So here is the chance to look at it again. This is an overview post with all articles that I wrote during the work that was done on the construction site. More will follow later on cabling, furniture etc. The articles are in chronological order now for your convenience. I hope you enjoy reading them. It was quite a project all in all. It took about 6 months to build this and I'm very happy that it is finished now. If you have any questions feel free to ask me.
  1. Preparation (3D plans and asking permission to the local government)
  2. 3D Design (3D plan for myself to get an idea of what could fit in)
  3. Furniture (First ideas how the furniture should look like)
  4. Drilling (Drilling holes in the backyard for the poles of the foundation)
  5. Poles (Filling the holes with concrete to form the poles)
  6. Digging (Digging a big hole for the basement and shortening the pole)
  7. More digging (Digging even deeper and shortening the poles even more)
  8. Water (At maximum depth now, just hitting the ground water level)
  9. Foundation (Construction of the foundation of the basement)
  10. Steel (Construction of the steel work for the walls)
  11. Walls (Construction of the walls)
  12. Roof (Construction of the roof)
  13. Wiring (Putting electrical wiring in the roof and walls.
  14. Door (Demolition of the side of our house)
  15. Ventilation (The basement is ready, and I can breath down there)
  16. Stairs (Basement finished and the first time we could go down ourselves)
  17. Isolation (Putting on some isolation and making it waterproof)
  18. Heating (Putting in the pipes for the floor heating system)
  19. Demoistering (Getting all the moisture out of the walls)
  20. Cabling (Installing the cable guiding system)
  21. Floor (Putting the final layer of the floor)
  22. Garden (Finished construction and putting our garden back in place)
And here are also two video's we shot during construction
  1. First Video Tour
  2. Second Video Tour

13 June 2009

Building Apollo Studio (Part 22)

I know a lot of you have been following the progress on building my Apollo studio. I'm still working on some stuff and that is why I don't have final pictures yet from the inside. But I do have some picture for you from the outside. I guess you all remember the big hole that was in the ground in our garden, well this is what it looks like now. Here you see our new terrace :) And yes the studio is really below there. Hard to imagine right? In case you wonder if I hear it when someone is walking on top. Well yes sometimes I do hear something. But it is very distant. And they can't hear me on the outside. We tested that. It is a bit like the top neighbors in a flat. But we are happy that the garden is back again since it is becoming nice weather again and we can sit more outside now.

Here is another nice picture I didn't want to keep from you. We have a little waterfall in our garden with a pond in front with some fish in it even. The front shallow part of this pond is actually the roof of my studio. So the fish are swimming literally on top of me. Kind of a nice idea since I'm working on my OceanoGraphy project now. I'm not only under the ground but actually below the water as well. Don't worry there are two separate water proof layers between the water and the concrete so there is not really a risk for leakage or anything. This rounds up the construction of the studio while some other projects like acoustics and cabling are still on going. I will post an overview post in the right time sequence soon for the construction thread so that it is easy to read in case you missed it.

30 November 2008

Second Apollo Studio Video Tour



Here is another video we took last week. In this video you see a nice view of the cabling guiding system in the studio running to the separate server room next to it. You also see my Eminent 310 that is already down there. When we made this video the machine you see in the middle of the room was still getting the moist out. At this time is is dry now and we are working on the finishing of the room. Ceiling, walls and floor.

18 November 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 21)

Last week the constructor finished work on the cable guiding system and leveled the floor. The holes in the floor next to the system were filled with concrete. Again a lot of water was put in so this also has to dry as well before we can continue. Here you can see that we moved the de-moisturizer to the studio. Since the most moisture is there now that seemed logical. We still get out several buckets of water every day. And even though it looks quite dry it can't be for this reason. But we hope that this week the ceilings will be sprayed in the studio and cinema. After that we can start on the wall and lay the carpet on the floor. I can't wait to finally move some stuff in there.

Here you can see the cabling guidance system in the server room. It stops were the 19'' cabinet will be positioned. It wont stand against the wall so that I can easily go around it. Work usually has to be done on the back for cabling etc. I have learned from my mistakes in the past ;) There is already some stuff in the cabinet as you can see. In the box is a brand new Cisco gigabit Ethernet switch that will provide networking to all the machines on the lower floor. There will be a couple of servers in the cabinet but also some machines in the studio later on. I'm trying to put as many as possible in the server room to keep the noise level low in the studio of course, but some machines need to be closer to the equipment. There will also be a KVM switch in the cabinet. I'm planning to use KVM extenders over UTP cabling to remotely control the servers in the rack from the studio.

As you can see we also have some light now downstairs. Still temporary but very convenient I can tell you. And you also see we already moved some furniture down. We just didn't have any space any more to temporary store it upstairs. This cabinet was in our living room, but will later on hold the DVD's that go into the cinema. The annoying thing about this stuff now is that we will have to take it out again when they are going to do the ceilings and again when the carpet is laid. A lot of extra work that we are not looking forward too since we are starting to get a bit tired. But I'm afraid that things won't happen on its own so we just have to keep going for a while. I think this will be the last construction post I put up since I'm planning to do a separate thread on cabling and acoustics. And starting from the work on the ceiling and the carpet on we are talking about acoustics actually. So lets consider rough construction done by now and let it dry for a bit. See you in the next thread :)

15 November 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 20)

Again lots has happened last week. The most important thing for me though was the installation of the cabling guidance system. Earlier you could see the space that was left open in the floor. Well here you can see what it is for. It is only much wider than I expected and it is also further away from the way. The good news is that more cabling will fit in, but my furniture builder has to make some changes now. Also an extra strip of carpet will have to be made behind the cabling guiding system. But I'm very happy with it. On both sides of the metal the constructor will put in concrete to make it equal with the existing floor. The only thing you will see after that is the metal on top.

Another important thing was done as well. We put in a big hose underneath the foundation of the existing part of the house to the new part. Through here all the cabling will go for power and network connectivity between the two parts. I asked the electrician to put in plenty of UTP cabling mounted on a patch panel on both sides so that I can use it for what ever I like. I can tell you that this hose is not very flexible so it took a lot of effort to put it in place. But when I'd need another cable in the future it can easily go trough this as well.

In this picture you can see the other end of the hose as it is now. There is one grey cable coming out that serves as temporary power feed. We already hooked up some light bulbs as well so now we finally have some light downstairs. Also the big heather is connected to this so that our living room fuse stays put :) All together we drew a bit too much amps from that one fuse. On the top right you also see some UTP sticking out on a roll. This is not coming from the other side, but meant for upstairs. The new part will be fed from downstairs as well for power.

As you can see from this picture on the right our current power cabinet is kind off crowded already. And another 5 groups (at least) will have to be made. The electrician and myself agreed quickly that this would not fit any more in a safe way. For this reason we decided that we will make another sub power distributor in the server room downstairs. There is plenty of room there.

If you are wondering what the heck all this stuff is: There is some home automation, alarm, CAI TV, video surveillance stuff, telephony, internet and networking equipment etc. And yes I know that is not normal. You don't have to remind me ;)

In the mean time we are very busy finishing the upstairs part. In the picture on the left you see that the ceiling is being spray painted. In the mean time we did the wall our selves. Also the carpet upstairs was put in last week and actually we are moving the stuff in the this weekend. I'm typing this actually while taking a break from carrying stuff around. It is nice that some stuff is being finished now. The studio is still a bit behind schedule because it is still to moist for some work that has to be done. We still take out about 3-5 big buckets of water from the de-moisturizer. Well we'll see how things are next week.

08 November 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 19)

I'm posting another update since lots of things are happening now in the new studio. This week the central floor heating system was fully installed and since the concrete of the floor is dry enough now, they also switched it on. I asked the plumber if he wasn't afraid of leaks, but he told me that the hole system is one long hose and that is was tested in the factory. So he didn't really worry about it. Well we'll see. At least it will be nice and warm again. He told me that it will take a while to heat up initially, but when it is warm it will stay comfortable a long time.

In the picture on the right you see the machine that gets the moisture out. It is running day and night now. It actually is a combined heater and condenser. We have to check it from time to time now to see if it isn't running over. We have to get the water out with buckets. It is amazing by the way how much water still is coming out of it. And it is hard to believe that all this water was all in the air first. It looks like the studio is drying up well now and the floor heating will only help. So hopefully next week we can start laying the carpet on the floor and paint the walls.

The nicest thing they installed last week were the new stairs. Here you see a picture from downstairs. It looks really nice being all wood and it is so much more comfortable to go up and down now. It is not completely finished yet since the railings on the side are still missing. I hope they will install those next week. Not only for safety but it looks better too.

Since the stairs are closed my wife is talking now to the constructor to make a door under the stairs and use the empty space under it to store some stuff we don't use much. That would be very convenient. We do have quite a big house but we don't have much storage room actually. It was amazing by the way how quickly they installed these stairs. They must have done it before ;)

Before the stairs were installed we moved one of my full height 19" cabinets downstairs. The other one will stay upstairs. We made a separate room in the basement were a lot of the computers for the studio will go. It will become kind of a server room, but I will also use it to store some crates I have with cables and other parts. So it will also be a storage room. This way I can keep the studio nice and tidy. It 1.5 by 4 meters wide so it can hold quite some stuff. I'd like especially the noisy stuff in there so the studio will be as quiet as possible. Unfortunately the electrician didn't show up on Friday so we still have no power or network cabling in there. I'll have to wait until he is finished before I can start moving some stuff in this room. I'll keep you posted on the progress as usual :)

05 November 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 18)

Just before the weekend the floor heating system was put in. On top of a layer of isolation you see a metal grid that hold the hole system in place. On top of that hoses are being mounted where just hot water is running trough. This will slowly heat up the floor that will act as one big radiator. Very clever. The only problem with it is that the floor we initially selected was not suited for floor heating so we had to come up with something else. Luckily we didn't order it yes, so it was no big problem to solve. We chose carpet eventually because it also has better acoustic characteristics.

On top of this floor heating system another layer of concrete was put to form the final top floor. They did this just before the weekend so it could dry out during the weekend. On Monday we could already walk on it. In the bottom of the picture on the right you can just see a bit of the new floor. You can also see the ladder that we use to go up and down now. Hopefully the final stairs will be put in this week. That will make it a lot easier to get stuff in and out of there.

In this picture you can see that it is still very moist downstairs. This week they put in some big heaters and moisture removers to get most of the water out. The drops you see on the ceiling are not coming from outside, but it water that is condensation on the coldest spot in the room which is the top layer of concrete of the basement. But this water has to go out before we can put the carpet on the floor and until it is dry I can't put any equipment in either. It would be a shame if anything gets damaged by the moisture.

In the picture on the right you see a shot of me talking to the furniture builder who came of the take measurements. Since the studio furniture will be custom build it has to fit exactly. You can also see that on the sides the floor is lower. There will be a special cable guiding system fitted there. It runs along all the walls and in this way I can get cabling from any place to any place. Very convenient :) I hope that electrician will come this week so I will have some light and power downstairs. But things are looking better every week :)

I conclude this post with a very nice widescreen picture my friend Chris made of the new studio:

30 October 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 17)

A lot has happened last week at the construction site, but I didn't have time before to report about it. The constructor is really working on finalizing things now. And it is starting to look really good. I'm getting more excited every day to put my equipment in there :) They are mainly working inside now, but on the outside still some things had to be done. On the roof of the basement a water proof layer is made so that no water can stand on it. Actually not very different from the way a normal roof would be made.

The only difference that on top of that they put another layer of isolation. you can see that in the picture on the right. This of course is meant to keep to cold outside. Well we noticed last weeks how much this isolation does for the temperature in side the house.
n top of this a layer of yellow sand will be put. About 6 centimeters we heard and on top of that there will be the tiles of our new terrace later. By then you wont be able to see anything anymore of the studio. Strange idea actually to sit on top of it later.

Since the outside is all ready now and closed they made the break through to our house. So now we have a big hole in the kitchen wall were the door to the new area will be later. Unfortunately this hole also brought back the cold in the house since the new area is not heated yet and the constructor leaves the door open all day. And also a lot of moisture is coming from downstairs where the concrete is drying. But this is only temporary and we will survive I'm sure ;)

It is nice now though that we can take people inside for a tour. Lots of friends and family come by now to look at the construction work.


On the inside all the walls are equalized now. Looks a lot better as well. All white and straight now in stead of the naked concrete. Everything is a lot lighter now. This week they will work on the floor heating and another layer of concrete will be put on top of that to for a nice equalized floor as well. I will try to update you on the in the end of the week. Today I'm very busy with the plumber and the guy that is working on our alarm system.

25 October 2008

First Apollo Studio Video Tour



Last week we went down in the basement for the first time. My friend Chris was with me and filmed it. As you can see it was still quite dark and moist. But it is nice to get a feel for the space for the first time. As you can hear from the audio there is quite some natural reverb down there. Now I'm sure we will have to work on the acoustics in the new studio.

18 October 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 16)

I have been very busy last week with the promotion of my new album so I didn't update you much, but a lot of work has been done by the constructor. The outside work is all done now. In the picture on the left you see the part that they build next to our house. Here also the stairs that lead down to the new studio will come. Since everything is closed now they also started to clean up. There was still a lot of dirt and water on the inside. The door to our house still has to be made, they will do that next week and then we can enter here through our kitchen.

On the inside also a lot of work has been done. All the inside walls are standing already and luckily the isolation is back. It had been quite cold in the house since they tore down the side wall, but now it is nice and warm again. Amazing how that stuff works. The electrician also put all the pipes in the wall already. Next week they will put another later on top of the walls to smooth everything out and they will also put another layer of cement on the floor. It is nice to see they are really finishing up now.

In the picture on the left you see a ladder standing in the whole that will later hold the stairs to the studio. The hole is actually a bit smaller than I imagined. It is fine for normal usage but a lot of stuff has to go down there. Also some bigger stuff like a 19'' rack that is 2 meters high and 60 x 80 centimeters wide to go into the computer room later. We did some measuring and it should all fit, but we agreed with the constructor that it would be wise to lift that rack down before the stairs are fitted. That will make things a lot easier.

In this picture you can see the ventilation and heating pipes I showed in an earlier posts. As you can see they are actually on the inside now. You can also see some of the piping for the electricity and the isolation layer. What you see here is part of the outside walls. Also another layer will be put on top of this that will form the inside wall later. I will try to update you again next week, with hopefully a door that leads to this new part of the house :)

11 October 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 15)

Lots has happened the last week. The constructor filled up the whole garden again with the clay the took out first. In the picture you see that they actually drove on the roof of my studio. Quite a scary idea, but it seems that the whole concrete construction is very strong. They are also starting to repair the damage to our neighbors garden. I hope that will be all OK soon. At least we can go out again in the back garden, but still some work has to be done. The will put some cover on top of the roof and over that another layer of yellow sand will come so that we can put the tiles of our terrace over that. Then you won't see a thing anymore of the studio.

I got some question about how I would be able to breath down in the studio. The constructor will put in a mechanical ventilation system. In this picture you see some pipes sticking out of the roof. Through here the fresh air will be put in. Also here are two pipes for the central heating system. The heating system will be fitted in the floor. That seemed like a nice solution since we won't have radiators fitted on the walls then. But it also poses some problems we found of when we went looking for a floor to put in the studio. We are still looking into a solution that can work with floor heating.

Last week the constructor also tore down more of the wall on the side of our house. At first I though they would only do that where the door would come but now we know they will take out this whole wall on the bottom floor. We could also notice last week that the insulation layer they took away actually works. It was very cold in the living room. It is amazing how much difference that makes. The reason they are taking out this wall it that it will make the room bigger that is build next to it. The difference is about 17 centimeters but still that is a lot since we are not allowed to build out as wide as we would like due to local government policies.

They also started to work on building on the first floor now. Here you see them making a wood construction that will hold the insulation of the new part. On both sides a wall will be made. If you look well you see a ladder sticking out in the middle of the pictures. This is were the stair will come that lead down to the studio. They also started working now on the inside of the studio. Still lots has to be done. I looked inside last week and they was still about 2 centimeters of water down there. I'm curious how they are going to get that out. Well we'll see about that next week. So far things are back on schedule and luckily the weather has improved again so I hope they can finish this part next week. So now I'm off to Eindhoven to release my new album :)

02 October 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 14)

Finally the rain stopped for a moment, so construction continued. Here you see another shot of how things look like now. You can see that the basements are ready. Again we took pictures from the roof of our neighbors for the nicer angle. At least on the outside it looks finishes now, but on the inside still a lot of work still has to be done, but I still haven't seen that. Today they also stopped pumping the water out and removed the whole draining installation. So lets hope the whole thing is waterproof indeed :)

The constructor also started to put the sand/clay back where it came from. I'm very happy that they started on the side where the garden of our neighbors collapsed so that at least it wont be able to collapse any further now. They are using a very small digging machine now and they actually drive the thing on the roof of our basement. I'm sure it is strong enough, but it is still a strange idea. The whole basement is packed now in isolation material by the way to keep the cold out later.

Another thing that stopped today, besides the rain, is the silence we enjoyed the last days. As you can see in the picture on the left the constructor (or should I say destructor) started to tear down a part of the wall on the side of our house today. Some of you wondered where the door would come. Well here it is :) You can probably imagine that this operation is quite noisy and at the moment I'm at home with a flu. This doesn't really help to stop my headache I'm afraid :( I'll be very happy when they stop working today.

And to make the feast complete this is our front door entrance on the inside. There is a whole there to go under our house. At the moment they are also drilling holes there. They are taking water and electricity etc. from under here and bringing it to the new basement. Ah well let's keep the thought that it is all for a good cause :) Our dog doesn't like it very much either by the way. She is going nuts here from the noise. My wife just rang the kennel if they had a spot and they did. So we decided to give her a couple of days rest there. OK I think that was enough update for a day :) I'm going to put my headphones back on and make some noise of my own.

29 September 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 13)

Last week the constructor started working on the roof of the studio. The first thing they did is put on large concrete plates. On top of that a maze from steel was made again that will reinforce the concrete that will be put on later. Also the electrician put in the pipes for the electrical wiring. We made two light spots in the studio and 4 places to get electricity from. Besides that I asked them to put in extra pipes for my surround monitoring setup. These active monitors will be attached to the ceiling so I needed two pipes per speaker one for the audio signal and one for the power. There will be one switch later to turn all the monitors on and off at once. Very convenient.

After this they put on a layer of concrete. You can just see the steel framework left in the corner. They straightened the whole thing by hand. Quite impressive to see. Of course the concrete is fluid for a while so they can still manipulate it. They also left a hole that you can see in the back of the picture. Though this opening (that will be bigger later) the stairs that will lead down will be fitted eventually. I find it still difficult to imagine how it will all look later, but I guess it will be alright :)

At the moment they put the concrete on it was very sunny weather. The constructor was actually afraid that it would dry too quickly. This could lead to potential cracks he said. So he asked us to put water on it after a few hours and again the next morning. Here you see my wife watering the concrete. It was already dry enough to stand on here. Quite nice that we can go outside already again. My wife and the kids also went down in the basement last weekend. It was quite an echo well they said. Which confirms that we will have a lot of work to get the acoustics right later. But we did anticipate on that. We'll see what they are going to do next this week. I hope at least they can close the gap to our neighbor's garden so that this can't be ruined any further. I'll keep you posted.

23 September 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 12)

Things are starting to look like something now. The outside walls are standing. Here you can see another picture my wife took from the roof of our neighbors. It gives again a nice overview of the project. We didn't have any more collapses so far. Fortunately the weather is still nice. Let's hope it stays like this for another 3 weeks. By then you won't see any of this anymore since it will be below the ground :) These walls are 25 cm wide so it is all quite solid. A special technique was used to ensure that everything will be water tight. To lower 12 cm of the whole construction will be in permanent ground water anyway. With bad weather this level will rise a bit even.

In the picture on the right you can see that they also started constructing the inside walls. Unfortunately one of these wall was incorrect on the drawings so it ended up on the wrong spot as well :( Another setback. They will have to tear it down again and build a new one. I saw this only when they were done. We don't know where it went wrong, but we'll figure that out with the architect. Unfortunately we didn't have any drawings left ourselves. We gave them all away to various subcontractors that also will be working on the studio afterward.

Here you see a picture of the studio with walls and all. There is someone standing inside so that should give you a sense of the room. It looks nice from the top. Here they are preparing the roof on top of the whole construction. They are going very fast now with construction it is even hard to keep up with taking pictures :) We still are a bit behind schedule but not much. So all still looks good. We had another minor problem. They forgot some cables that would be in pipes in the wall. But we will put them in later. This is a bit more work but not really a setback.

Today they also finished the first phase of building this roof. They put concrete plates on top with metal wiring attached. The wiring from the walls are bend into this and on top of this there will be another layer of concrete. Hopefully they will put this in tomorrow. The basement will be a very solid concrete construction after this. On top of this roof there will be about 6 cm of sand and then our terrace will go on that. So when we sit outside in the summer when the weather is nice. We will sit on top of the studio :)

18 September 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 11)

On Monday we had another setback unfortunately. Another collapse of the side of the hole. This time at our neighbors. A part of their garden collapsed into ours and the fence in between came down. Here you see the constructor cleaning the mess up. They put ropes on the fence to keep it up again. It took them almost all day to repair this again so another day. Our neighbor was not very happy of course but was at first was concerned that this would not go any further. The guys that were going to build the walls came at 7 that day and left again because of this. We slept very bad the following night hoping that we could finally continue. I will be very happy when they can start filling up this ever growing hole again.

On Tuesday morning we were happy to see that nothing else collapsed that night. At 6:45 the constructor arrived and they started constructing the temporary double walls that will hold the concrete for the final walls. It was quite nice to see that they have a complete fitting system for this. We expected them to use wood or something like that, but that wasn't the case. They use big panels that are apparently reusable. But still a lot of work. It took them all day to build this construction. Quite impressive to watch this.

In the pictures on the left you see the final construction. On top you see wooden planks that makes a path they can walk on. Very clever. You can also see the double wall now. In the space in between the concrete will go. You can also see that they put poles to the walls in the middle to hold the walls up. The weight of the concrete is a lot and it is nice when the walls end up straight of course :) These poles are fastened to the foundation so the whole thing can't go anywhere. They left it like this on Tuesday because it was already quite late.

On Wednesday they returned to put in the concrete. They used a big crane to hoist up small portions they could put in between the double wall. They went round the project a couple of times filling everything up smoothly and equally. This whole process took about half a day to complete. Now this has to harden again for another few days and the planning is that on Monday they come back to remove the temporary double walls and they we should have nice concrete walls for the basement :) I'm very curious how that will look. The step after that will be construction a roof on top of this all. I'll update you next week on the progress. For now we are a bit less worried and hopefully we can sleep a bit better. I just hope not more of the neighbors garden will slide down again. We can only hope for the best on this and repair whatever damage is done afterward.