Roselea

Category: Garage

The Garage

  • Preparing for the Floor Slab!

    This morning we pulled up the foundation’s formwork and it wasn’t too difficult thank goodness! Very nice smooth finishes with just a hint of a textured surface picked up from the OSB sheet wood. We are planning to reuse the formwork to build the floor slab tomorrow!

    Then the next job was to bring up to the correct level the sand inside all the foundations so we can lay down the DPM (Damp Proof Membrane) right across the whole garage without any dips or bumps!

    So far we have done the back portion which was rather fiddly with all the pipes, conduits and man hole chamber sticking out of the ground! We scraped the surface to make a smooth finish. We double compacted the area to make sure it is fully settled and ready for the concrete!

    Tomorrow we finish off the front portion of the garage and then we can build the formwork with the DPM cut and stuck together to form a water tight envelope ready for the liquid free flowing special concrete from Lafarge called Agilia Force! It is so liquid that there is a potential chance that if the DPM wasn’t stuck down properly along the joins, then the concrete could find an edge and flow under the plastic DPM sheet and push it up!! Not nice!

    This is also why we are going to mix some concrete of our own and cover all the bases of the sticking out objects to make sure the DPM is well securely stuck and water tight on each conduits and pipes!

    Another early start ! phew!

  • Temporary Driveway nearly finished

    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.

    Driveway - mostly done

  • Pouring the Garage Foundations

    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…

    truck reversingconcrete truck

    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 doneoverflow area half filled

  • Concrete Man Comes!

    The concrete Rep from Lafarge came today to see our site. Full of very useful information. We have ordered 4.5 cubic metres and it is coming tomorrow at 11am.

    The concrete is called Agilia Trench Flow, it is self floating and semi self levelling (with a bit of help! The rep will be here to oversee the operation and do the necessaries after the trenches are filled like spray on a plastic gel surface to protect the concrete while it is curing. All this in the price! Yes it is 30% to 40% more expensive than regular gen3 concrete but in the long run it is cheaper as we would have had to hire extra bodies to shift all the gen3 concrete to all the trenches, tramp it to make sure there are no air bubbles, level it and finally polish the surface after a few hours !

    All that is done automatically (almost) with this Lafarge concrete!

    We will see the results for ourselves tomorrow ! it

  • BCO approves Holes!

    Our friendly BCO have been and inspected our holes, ready for the concrete foundations of the garage. It looks very nice and well compacted he said so he’s happy, we are happy and the concrete is happy !

    The concrete is coming Wednesday morning!

    Approved for concrete

  • Filled around the foundations

    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.

    Filled to base of slab (nearly)

  • Doing Form work (not paper ones)

    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!

    Garage Foundations - Marked out corners

    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).

    Pile of Steaks! (or Stakes even)

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

    most stakes in

    Thursday

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

    Formwork started

    Friday

    Finished the formwork on the sides and front.
    Side Forms Finished

    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.

    Formwork Finished

  • Requested BCO to come and inspect foundations

    We are ready for the next inspection visit. This time it is our foundations and making sure the bottom of the trenches are on firm ground ready for 300mm thick and 300mm wide of concrete foundation’s!

    Hopefully our Building Control officer will come Monday so we can order the concrete as soon as possible.

  • Cutting time

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

    New saw table

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

  • Ready to start garage foundations

    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).

    Garage GW Ready for foundation form work