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.
We had a delivery of 20tons of recycled asphalt road chippings. We have spread it all over the area where our future drive way will be (in a couple of years time). This will give a much firmer ground and most importantly it will not go muddy and slimy in a rain storm!
We have put on a 1 in 100 slope down towards the bottom of the site and there will be a large open trench full of various stones to allow the rain water to flow into and have somewhere to soak away in its own time.
The garage will have an additional slope away from the doors but we will do that one next week after the floor slab is poured.
The surface compacts down to a very tight and fine granular finish and doesn’t give way even when the next lorry with 4tons of asphalt came! It only depressed the surface by 10mm or so!
We will cut the soak away trench and finish off the resurfacing tomorrow.
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.
Spent yesterday and today levelling and tidying up the grounds in front of the garage and the storage shed to get them ready for laying down an asphalt hard-core layer of around 100mm thick to produce a water resistant surface.
This will reduce the muddy conditions for both boots and tyres especially some of our more heavy deliveries!
We will cut a temporary trench across from the shed and half way towards the Loke and fill it with clean stones to act as the soak-away for the new surface to drain into. On top we will lay a line of paving slabs that we have lying around to provide a friendly path for visitors to our “new” front door when we move into the temporary accommodations !
The new surface will provide a firm and clean ground to store our timber and sheet wood long term as they arrive and needed for the build.
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
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!
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.
Having paid the kings ransom on Monday, the man from EDF energy came this morning. Looked at the site and old meter and approved the route for the new cable. But he said we were using the wrong ducting!, apparently we should be using a solid duct not a twinwall. Luckily the new duct will fit inside the old so we will just have to buy some of the new and thread it though the old…
He said there is a 4-5 week lead time on work so we will have to work out when they will be needed.
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!
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.
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.
Repositioned the electricity ducts to align with wall. Set the height of all the stakes set up yesterday. Started installing the formwork.
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.
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.