I don’t know if the word exists but we relaid the surface of the loke just before our new drive. After all the trucks last week the end of the loke looked like this …
In fact one of the lorries from Jewson on Friday nearly got bogged down and could not turn the corner and back down our drive. So we decided that we would buy yet more granulated asphalt (Total of 32 tons (so far)), this was delivered this morning and after removing the worst of the mud we laid the new surface. We also tidied the final part of the loke so we can park the car.
One of the last groundwork tasks finished. We laid paving slabs from the front door to the loke. The wonder of a diamond saw allowed us to make a neat mitre joint at the bend and V cut at the front door. The gravel is part of the drainage for the drive and storage areas and is up to 600mm deep.
Yes we mean that literally! Over 8 tons of timber has been delivered today. Some of it was special ordered so we got a whole pack of it, which is enough of that size for the main house as well. Most of the rest will be used in the garage construction.
We have covered all of it with tarpaulins and strapped them down.
As advised we cut saw slots in our nice pristine concrete slab, this is to allow the concrete to crack in a predefined place if the ‘plastic shrinkage’ exceed the tensile strengthof the concrete. When laying standard concrete it is normal to leave breaks between sections to allow this shrinkage, but as our slab was poured in one piece other arrangements has to be made.
We cut two slots, the first from left to right under the dividing wall (2.5m from Mass wall) and the second from front center back to the first line.
We finished off the materials storage area today. This where we will put all the bulk deliveries of timber and other building supplies.
A week ago we flattened the triangle between the storage shed, school field hedge and the loke (about 70m²). Today we laid geo-textile over it and placed 50-70mm of granulated asphalt covering and compacted.
We also filled in some of the ruts caused by the concrete trucks yesterday…
As requested by Kevin we removed the formwork from the slab this morning. The slab as set hard already and can be walked on… though it is very slippery where it still wet!
Slab has a nice smooth finish and you can see the fibres!
After the problems bailing out the actual pour went smoothly!
There were 3 loads of concrete (Agilia Force) delivered between 11:00 and 12:15. Each load only took 3-4 minutes to pour into the formwork! The mix was quite fluid and only need gentle encouragement to spread out evenly, we only had to walk around pushing with our boots to get a good level.
When we were satisfied we had a even distribution of concrete the Lafarge rep (Kevin) brought out his agitator bars. These are round poles held horizontally with two handles rising up to hold. These had to be used in two passes, 1st pass involved moving up and down about 50mm then advancing by the width of the pole and repeating (this releases any traped air). 2nd pass was a light dabble over the surface to give a smooth finish.
The rain continued to fall in showers (even hail) while we were working and Daphne bailed out some of the excess water from the corners where it had been pushed by the concrete.
Finally Kevin sprayed a wax based agent all over the finished concrete to help the slab cure properly.
Here is an edited and speeded up (16 times) video of the pour.
Well we had 10.9mm of rain since we finished the DPM Yesterday. That’s over 800 litres of water to get out of the garage slab DPM.
The job was not as easy as we thought when we started at 9 o’clock. First we tried the submersible pump – no go, the water was not deep enough. Then we used the drill pump successfully for 1/2 an hour before it overheated! At this point probably half the water had been removed. Third try was using sponges and towels! – this worked but was very slow. Then Shaun remembered the wet and dry vacuum cleaner – this worked well, better than any of the other things.
By this time it had started to rain again! and Kevin (Lafarge man on the spot) said we had got rid enough water! So it time for the concrete.
