In areas of Lagos like Lekki where the soil is not firm, the terrain requires that the soakaway, basically a concrete box, is cast above ground and then sunk. The procedure starts typically with the carpenter using wood panels to create what is termed ' form work' in the building industry. The form work is a wooden shell where the iron fabricator (Iron bender) will put in the reinforcement (iron rods cut and then joined together with binding wire. After this is done, concrete is poured into the form work and left for a week to dry.

After this period, when the concrete work would have dried properly, the wooden formwork is then pried off the cast concrete. The concrete box is then plastered inside and out so that it can become watertight. The next step is for labourers (diggers) to enter inside the concrete walls of the soakaway to start digging out the soil at the edges of the concrete walls. As this is done, the concrete box will start sinking into the ground. This soil excavation, because of the nature of the soil, will encounter soil water at some stage. At this point, a water pumping machine will be required to evacuate the water as digging continues. When the right depth has been achieved, a concrete floor is then cast at the bottom of the walls. It will be necessary to continue pumping out water to achieve this.

The last stage is to cover the top with a concrete slab.

Picshure please sounds interesting

OP, thanks for sharing.

I don't have a picture right now. I will post one when my builder get to that stage. I came across the article while trying to understand the process builders go through sinking sock aways.

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