Some very unseasonal weather today – made a quick trip to the block armed with a laser level, a string line and a measuring stick, to see how far short of the required depth my trench was.
Nice warm, sunny day quickly went south as a summer thunderstorm went over, sending me scurrying for the shed.
Thankfully I’d just finished the measuring part and was just mucking about with a fat masonry bit in my drill, tidying up the trench walls.
Got home to do my calculations, and see whether I needed a jackhammer or a bigger excavator to finish the trench – and surprisingly, the answer is neither. The continuous footing option has made the required depth significantly shallower – the usual rule is [height of the wall] = [depth of the footing], whereas I’m now able to do the footings at ~61% of the height because the whole thing braces itself much better than individual post holes. So where I thought the trench was wildly too shallow, it’s actually substantially deeper than it needs to be for the most part.
