Why the slab never touches the ground

On 1 June the excavators finished sixteen pool pits in about 48 hours, and the pile heads across the site were cut off at a single level: 60 cm above ground.

That 60 cm is not a rounding. It is the whole point.

What the gap does

Bali’s problem is not rain, it is ground water and what it carries. A slab poured onto fill sits in a wet sponge for eight months of the year. Water moves up through the concrete, salts come with it, finishes lift, and the smell arrives about two years after handover, which is to say after the sales team has gone home.

Lifting the structure clear of the ground gives you three things at once: a ventilated void so the underside can dry, service runs you can reach without breaking floors, and a slab that is not in permanent contact with moving water.

It costs more. Everything on this list costs more.

What was done

• Bored piles to [depth], set out to the structural drawings, log kept per pile
• Pile heads trimmed to one datum, 60 cm above finished ground
• Ground beams tying the heads, then the suspended slab
• Pool pits excavated first, so the deep work happened before the structure went up rather than beside it

What confirms it

This is our own record of our own work: our photographs, our pile log, our engineer’s drawings. There is no independent inspection standing behind this article, and you should treat any developer’s build diary the same way, including ours.

What can be checked from outside is the permit and the certificate: PBG before the work, SLF after completion, both with numbers and issuers, both in the document register. And on any working day you can come and look at it yourself.