Keeping The Old Mixer Going

 I posted a picture of this old mixer the other day and a builder friend of mine laughed at how dirty it was.

Yes, her best days might be behind her, but she's had a long hard life! 

Dad bought this about 30 years ago for £25 from a farm sale. It has done countless other jobs since then. It's main down side is it's not easy to move but otherwise it's a great bit of kit. I think it's been here for the last 7 years at least and used to do so many jobs. 

Extension Progress - Slab Poured!

My dad and I have had a few busy weekends wince the last time I wrote about the extension! 

Easiest to go through it in pictures:

The cavity under the ground level has been filled with a light concrete mix

Drainage has been added, pea gravel around all pipes.
I also built a man hole from scratch.

Drainage in the house surrounded by peas gravel and hardcore added to the slab

Wackered base

Sand blinding added so the plastic won't get damaged

Plastic added - this made a huge play pen for the youngest! 

6 inches of insualtion added to be under the concrete floor

Plastic to go between the insualtion and plastic as well! (build regs requirement) 

Wet concrete being laid - the grid pattern is the reinforcing in the concerete slab

Tamping the concrete roughly level - to lay the concrete we also had the help of one of dads workers Andy!
Got it mixed and laid in an afternoon.

Floating up the concrete late at night

A nice finish on the concrete - this will be the tiled floor of the kitchen eventually! 

It's certainly been busy around here! 

Yesterday and today are being spent getting ready for Dill the brick layer who is coming tomorrow. I've load the slab out with blocks, got all the starter bars in the walls, moved bricks so they're nice and close and made sure he's got plenty of sand and cement. Anything to keep him efficient and save me money! 

Exciting times now - can't wait to see this going up! 

Patio Progress - Concrete Steps

This has been a labour of love over the last three weeks! Blood, sweat and the whole of my little finger nail (which got ripped off on a piece of reinforcing bar) have gone into these steps! 

With the patio being so large I decided that having a nice, wide flight of stairs would really set it off. There was a few ways I could have made them; timber was out of the question as I wanted something maintenance free and to last a long time (it's very wet here and they'd rot in ten years or so). 

That left me with either using blocks or concrete, the blocks would be more expensive and I'm not great at laying them (so I'd get my brick layer to do it. The concrete on the other is something I could do myself but it does involve a lot of work (and I mean a lot!).

First step form work

Not one to be deterred by a bit of work I went for the concrete option. I have built full flights of stairs like this where you pour all the concrete for the steps in one go (have a look here) but I decided that as I was mixing the concrete in a small mixer by hand I'd do one step at a time, doing it this way means I can use the same timber to form each step as well so it save money. 

I join each step by leaving some reinforcing wire between each step to tie into the one above. Each step is also vibrated to remove the air from the concrete using an industrial vibrator (no rude jokes please!) 

These pictures show the process, there was a bout 6 to 8 mixes full of concrete in each step! I tended to move and set up the shuttering/form work one night, then mix and pour the concrete the next and strip it the night after that. 

Pouring the concrete in for the first step

Removing the shuttering/form work 

Second step form work in. Stone fills in behind and is compacted down. 

third step - note teh bars in the back to tie in the next step

Another step - I did this one when we poured the footings for the extension as I ordered enough concrete to do it - seemed daft to mix it if we were having some delivered.  

Nearly there! 

Steps finished!

I was surprised how much work were in these stairs, even though I knew there would be. I guess mixing concrete after eight at night after doing a ten hour day on a building site is going to make me a bit more tired as well! 

Still it feels great to have them done. They'll get clad in the same stone that the patio will be with a handrail down the sides. 

What do you think? 

Ever made steps like this?

Making A Concrete Plant Pot

I've been doing a lot of concreting lately (I'll show you some more of what I've been up to later) so I thought I'd have a mess around with some left over concrete. 

So with some underground pipe, a bit of plywood and half a Vimto bottle (I do love Vimto so much) I knocked up a very simple shutter to pour some concrete into.

Now because all the sides are straight I knew I'd have a bit of difficulty getting it out of the shutter, basically I made it to be cut out afterwards, much quicker for me and as this was only an experiment it didn't matter. 

The pot poured. Shuttering is basically making things in reverse, so here you see the future base of the pot.

And here's the finished pot. I am only messing around and experimenting at his point but I am tempted to make some big planters for my new patio as I find terracotta doesn't last and other big pots are so expensive. I like the modern look of the concrete on the edges, and although I know this isn't to everyone's taste I think it could look quite cool if you had a collection of pots in a group with some striking plants in them. 

I'm planing on making some big square planters on wheels to act as a barrier to the stairs on the patio that can be moved out of the way, as well as some big pots to plant up some acers and other ornamentals in.

What would you make out of concrete? 

(I know I've asked this before on this post here but it's always interesting to here if people have had new ideas)

I also like the look of these.

Patio Progress - Under Patio Storage

So on the post I put on Wednesday night I mentioned that I was installing some storage under the patio that I'm building. 

The idea behind this was that the patio was going to be raised no matter what (the garden is on a north facing slope) so it's a good way to add storage space without another structure in the garden.

By adding the ribs to the wall it adds a lot of strength anyway and I wanted a flight of steps down the middle so it wasn't much more work to increase the foundation size to allow for my under patio storage idea. 

It has created me some work though. 

The tops of these storage areas are going to be reinforced concrete, I can only work on the one at the moment as I have to leave the blockwork for the other down to give e access to the garden at the moment.

Last Saturday I managed to put up the form work (shuttering) for the slab on the right hand storage bay. It's only about 6ft wide by 3ft deep but it should still provide a useful area (I'm thinking kids toys at the moment).

I cheated a bit with the shuttering and used blocks to support it, with timber supports just under the OSB sheeting that I could knock out when the concrete has gone off (this is very important as they're is a lot of weight in concrete). I also used sash clamps to fix it to the block work as if I had screwed it to the blocks the chances are it would have pulled that single block off the wall. I did wrap my clamps in bags to save concrete getting on them (I'm sure that there was a god of carpentry angry at me somewhere!). 

When we started to pour the concrete some friends turned up - just at the right time (for us anyway) so it helped to get the concrete into the form work. We managed to get the tractor and mixer right up to where we were working as well, so with the addition of a little bit of tin sheeting it meant that we didn't have to use a wheel barrow! 

Dad forgot about a trench we'd dug earlier in the year. 

Concrete poured

Looking good, I roughed up the surface to provide a key to the slabs that will be laid on top

Form work removed, self supporting concrete roof/shelf.

Next job is to start shuttering the steps up to the patio and then to fill in the top (our pipework from last November is still exposed at the moment) with stone and slab it. 

A lot of work for my silly ideas - but it'll be worth it in the end! What do you think?

Shuttered A Greenhouse Step

Sometimes you do a little job and you wonder why you haven't done it sooner. 

The other Sunday when we were busy concreting, we had a couple of barrow full of concrete left over. I didn't want to waste it (I hate waste as you know) so my brother suggested I shutter a step for the greenhouse. Using half a pallet collar for the sides and a few lengths of batten as posts I quickly knocked up a rough shutter and filled it with concrete. It's not the first time I've made steps though but these were a bit easier!

Shuttered greenhouse step

I left the top tamped to give some grip and tapped around the outside to get rid of some of the air after I filled it up. When I struck the shutter the next day I was quite pleased with my ten minute job, I'm now wondering how I used to open the awkward door on my greenhouse without it! 

It has got me thinking though, we've got lots of concreting jobs coming up, footings, drainage, etc so having somewhere to put left over concrete would be a good idea. I'm going to make some shutters to form some concrete pig troughs and maybe a few other items. 

What would you make shutters for to use up left over concrete?

More Concreting This Weekend!

More concreting this weekend. 

It's starting to feel weird unless we've mixed at least some concrete on a Sunday! 

Yesterdays concreting wasn't at mine though - it was at my brothers new house. They've only been in a month but they've already done loads, lots of ripping things out, mainly concentrating on the living room and dinning room. 

I called round one night a few weeks ago and Dave showed me some quarry tiles under the carpet in the living room. My heart sank a little as I knew, with the age of the house, that the chances were those tiles would be laid on ash and dirt, we lifted a couple of the tiles and could push a screwdriver 4 inches into the dirt. Only one solution really, dig it all out and lay a new floor. Lots of work.

 Dave has worked like a trooper and with the help of his fiancée they've got the floor all dug out in the last week, added a layer of scalpings, wackering it down and then blinded it with sand.

 I turned up Saturday to give him a hand. We got the first layer of plastic down, added the insulation then added another layer of plastic to prevent it reacting with the insulation (apparently the wet concrete can react with the aluminium layer on the insulation).

 We then added a level timber around the walls to act as our datum to tamp off. The idea being that a notched timber could then be moved up and down the walls to make sure all the concrete is level. It can also be tamped to remove the air and bring the "fat" to the surface to make it easier to level.

On Sunday we concreted it. Dave had a few mates there to help as well as me and dad, all the concrete was mixed using the mixer on the tractor - that way we can do it on a Sunday rather than waiting to have a ready mix. I was in charge of laying it, helped by Dave, and I think we got a pretty good finish. He did record a short time lasp video of the floor going in (I'm the one in a blue shirt) - Maybe I should add the Benny Hill music to it!

The finished floor

Now the waiting begins! He wants to lay a wood floor on this and concrete dries at 1mm per day so they've got a bit of a wait before we can lay any flooring! 

Building A Greenhouse Base

I've been on about getting my "new" greenhouse up for ages now and time is rapidly ticking away until I'll really need it. 

On Friday dad sprung the news on me that he was going to give me a hand on Sunday and to make sure I was ready!

 The trouble is where I wanted to put the greenhouse has been, how should I put this, somewhat neglected.

 A few hours moving bit of rubbish and chopping down all the nettles and I was ready for dad to arrive.

 As usual he arrived in style! A trailer full of stuff and the knowledge that we'd have a hard afternoon a head of us!

 It's pretty handy having a dad that has a digger (well multiple diggers) and is rather good when he's in control of it! The site slopes quite a bit (probably around 18" over the 12ft) so we levelled it off first, making a large pile in the garden to be moved at a later date. 

 Then using a narrower bucket on the digger we dug a strip for the foundations of the greenhouse, levelled it up and began mixing concrete.

 It took around 20 barrows of concrete for the base. As I took this picture dad shouted "Is that so you can remember what I was like before you killed me!" I guess that we were working rather hard on a Sunday afternoon.

 The 12ft by 8ft strip foundation. I'll lay a concrete block one layer high all round this and fix the greenhouse to it to give me a little extra height.

The last picture shows where it will sit next to the smaller greenhouse. I'm looking forward to having some more under cover growing space. I'm planning on lots of tomatoes and chillies!

Now the question is what should I do with the floor of the greenhouse. Should I have beds and clean them out every year or grow things in  pots/buckets and have slabs under them?