The excavator moved in this week, here are some photos of the work being done:

7:47 Start

They had to recheck my measurements, the operator commented that his were remarkably right on mine

I think they got used to me appearing every time the excavator went quiet

The final trench

The Drive Way is in

The Driveway crossover

We needed a drive way as the soil at Dutton can get quiet slippery when wet.

The grader made quick work of clearing the grass ready for the road base.

150m ready for road base

The shed pad leveled

A muddy mess at the bottom of the property

150m of road base laid

The Drive way is located centrally on the property. After major construction work there will be a line of deciduous trees up either side of it.

The shed pad finished

The house goes here

The property is ours

On March 10 the property settled, the title is now sitting on my desk. We have also bought our plans from Peter Lees. Next job was to get the council building application in.
A few thing that we needed were; soil test, percolation tests and energy efficiency assessment.
There was a minor hiccup with the soil testing, we were looking at a high to problematic foundation design, but thanks to Doug, the soil test engineer for reexamining the site. After his second test we came up with medium size footing.
The energy efficiency test came back with a 7.1 star rating. This I am extremely please with as poor energy performance was one of my bugbears of the old house in the city. As a matter of fact the assessor told me that if the new house was located in the city it would have achieved an 8 star rating.
The Plans went into the council yesterday, Mid Murray Council are a great bunch to deal with, their information sheets are very concise and it enabled me to take everything I needed for the submission.
Now we have to wait for the Council to approve out plans. Plenty to be done in the mean time.

Still Selling the old house

Well, we are still trying to sell our old house. Things didn't progress as fast as I would have liked. our youngest is now going to the school in Nurioopta and we are home keeping the house ready for inspections.
On the progressive side though, we have rented a lockup in the Barossa and are gradually moving our less needed gear up there, the hope is to reduce the stress of moving.
Unfortunately as well, due to council regulations it will be hard to live on the block whilst building, we are unable to build a shed before we get approval for the house (hence the lockup), once this is built it would be very tempting to put a caravan on the block and live in it :).