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.
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!
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.
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.
