Main house, utility house and DSQ, Sweetwaters

Working out how three buildings sit on one plot: where the main house faces, how far the utility house and staff quarters sit from it, and how you get a vehicle to all three without driving past the front door.

Drawings for all three buildings, planned together so the roofs, the stone and the openings read as one place rather than three separate jobs.

Foundations, frame and ring beams designed for the ground on this site.

Submitted to Laikipia County and approved before work began.

Foundations went in during the rains, which is when this ground tells you the truth about itself. Strip footings were cast, then substructure walling in machine cut stone up to damp proof course, with hardcore, blinding and a damp proof membrane under the ground floor slabs. Walling carried up in stone around a reinforced concrete frame, with shuttered ring beams at wall plate level tying each building together. The main house and utility house are now roofed, so the work has moved inside and out of the weather.