Author: Stephen

As we are on a tight schedule we started work at 9:00am and finished at 6:40pm, this is the longest day we have done so far!

The morning was spent completing the sand fill up and compaction. Then I went round all the concrete edges and removed any sharp parts. Meanwhile Shaun was preparing timber for the form work.

After lunch we constructed the formwork for the slab from 300mm high x 18mm thick OSB (recycled from the foundations) screwed to the edge of 150mm x 50mm timber planks. These formed a continuous structure for the sides. After positioning and aligning the sides we fixed then by banging stakes into the soil against the planks.

We finished by making the front of the slab with the two doorways inset by 100mm, which ment forming  four corners. By this time we were working by floodlight!

We have been laying the granulated asphalt down over the last 2 days. On Thursday we laid an area in front of the garage which has a slope towards the sheds. We started Friday by digging a trench from the front door past the sewage tank and to the loke, the trench was filled with small stones to provide drainage. We then laid the last part in front of the garage and the next section towards the loke. It started raining as we finished so it will be interesting to see how the surface performs.

The time has come! We are placing the first concrete on the site. We are using a special concrete from Lafarge called ‘Agilia Trench flow’. This should allow us the pour all the concrete from one or two places as it is very fluid.

The concrete truck and the company rep both arrive at the top of the loke at the same time, now the tricky bit – reversing down the loke. Its quite a long way…

We get down and into place after a few minutes. The concrete starts to flow at 11:15. Our shallow and narrow foundations cause the flow to be a bit slow, so we had to help it along a bit. We then switched to filling from the other side and finally filled the door pillar pad. All poured by 11:40. 4500 litres of concrete into the foundations with very little effort! No barrows, no tamping or vibrating…

The only problem was we wanted to fill the formwork right to the top, so we had some spillage when flowing the concrete round. The concrete truck only has one barrow left in it after filling all the trenches, so we poured this into the overflow area. Collecting up the spillage made up 3 barrows more which also went into the overflow area.

Cleaning up took longer than pouring did.

All of the area around the foundations has now been filled to nearly the right level. The area inside the garage was filled with sand and compacted and the outsides filled with soil.

We are now ready for concreting after we place the final formwork for the pad under the central pillar between the doors.

Sunday

Cleared last bit of topsoil alongside the sheds away by spade and barrow,  then carefully marked out the four corners of the garage, checking to ensure everything was square!

Monday

Started by cutting up the OSB into strips, then pounded in support stakes along side the sheds. Each stake was checked with the dumpy level to get a nice level foundation.

Tuesday

Bought 51m of 2″x1″ batten and cut up into 90 x 600mm sharpened  steaks (oops can’t eat them so they are stakes).

Placed most of the rest of the stakes around the foundations.

Thursday

Repositioned the electricity ducts to align with wall. Set the height of all the stakes set up yesterday. Started installing the formwork.

Friday

Finished the formwork on the sides and front.

Dumped a few loads of sand behind the earth tubes and compacted. Finished the formwork with the cross strip to hold up the internal wall.

Made a large saw table to expand the much smaller table saw to a usfull size.

We then cut up 6 sheets of 18mm OSB into 300mm wide strips for the foundation formwork.

Placed and compacted more sand in the garage footprint ready to install the form work for the foundations. The foundations will be 300mm thick and start 450mm below finished ground level (this is to ensure no frost effects the ground under them).