I had only every built low garden walls before, and here I was about to start building a house - the adventure was well underway.

The first brick goes in. You can see the earth bank the wall will have to hold up when its done. Also are the 12mm steel rods poking out through the concrete, to join into the steel & concrete in the cavity of this wall.

Not too wonky - could be better. These blocks weight around 20KG a piece, a 12 hour day sees around 100 blocks laid.

The first skin is done, the steel mesh is in. Here you can see the extra large wall ties, and the steel in the corners of the wall. Also in place are a couple of bits of pipe. This is propably the last chance to get a hole through this wall.

The wall from on top of the bank we will be holding up.

The second skin is up. Once a couple of rows have set, the cavity is filled with concrete. The steel has to be accurately in the middle of the concrete. This is done by wedging the steel into place, as the concrete is poured in.

More rows of the inner skin of the retaining wall. With wall ties in place to bond to the inner skin of the cavity wall. The BCO does not like these, so they end up being cut off.

The bobcat in action, to get the concrete into the top of the cavity.

The BCO decided he wanted the inside of the retaining wall waterproofing, here is some of the water proofing in place. The black sticky plastic stuff is a nightmare. It does not stick to the wall that well - even with the priming, it sticks to itself like mad. I am using the Fosroc product range.

The architect wanted the waterproofing on the outside, which seems sensible to me.

Once the waterproofing is on the outside, land drain goes into the bottom on the trench. Then goes in lots of washed stone. Here we see the stone being delivered to a neighbours driveway. Its November by now, that lorry won't get in my gate. The lorry driver once lived in my house - small world. We have a lot of carting stone to do, 20 tonnes of the stuff. It snows the week after we finish this.

The finished job. The polystyrene protects the waterproofing from the stone. There is also geo-textile round the stone & land drain to stop the mud blocking the pathways for the water.