Below the Floor

Here are some photos of the foundation of the house.  The principle was to keep the timber above ground level with its perils from moisture and white ants. 
 

Phone cabling is below house.

Metal cap on brick support as white ant barrier

When I purchased the house in 1975 (for $20,000) there was only a thin walkway running along the back of the house, and some rain water worked it way into the "basement" area.  Several years later  I brought in a machine to excavate behind the house for patio and fish pond.  That patio now carries rainwater away from the house which keeps the basement area dry.  I had the enormous amount of excavated dirt dumped up the hill where I built a retaining wall, leveled the dirt, created a large vegetable patch where I now do most of my burning.  The ash from the tons of vegetation that I have burned at that site would have made the clay soil much more fertile and friable, and one day I might try growing vegetables again. 

The entire area is remarkably clean and free of cobwebs, a testament to that evil brew of dieldrin, which has been banned throughout most of the world, and diesel oil.  Dieldrin has been described as " ... an extremely persistent organic pollutant ... does not easily break down." The description must be true because the one and only white ant treatment that I've given the foundation was in 1975, 38 years ago.

In the fist photo there is a glimpse of two beer bottles.  In the early days I stored my home made beer and wines in the basement with its even temperatures.

In the 1980's I agreed to assist a post graduate student working under Dr Phil Jennings at Murdoch University, who was doing research on radon gas in the Perth hills.  This basement produced the highest levels of radon that he recorded in his wide sampling.  The radon gas was being produced by the breakdown of the granite in both the foundation and the bedrock below.  Recordings in the living areas of the house produced normal levels of radon.