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

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).