Week 51-52 - Pouring New Concrete Slab

We are pouring a new concrete slab over the entire split bottom floor of the building. These areas do already have a concrete floor but it is no more than I thin skin over the hard-core foundations at points, extremely uneven, cracked and in multiple sections. All in all no good and more importantly we need the floor to be water proof for our new flood defense plans, so we are pouring a new waterproof concrete slab at a minimum of 10 cm thick over the whole floor. Unfortunately the old floor is so un-level, to get our 10cm thickness in the highest corner we are actually pouring 28cm in the lowest. All in all we have poured 24m3 which is well over 50 tonnes of new concrete. Now this stuff doesn’t grow on trees (I assume mainly for gravitational reasons) and this has been quite depressingly expensive… ‘yay new concrete floor!’ doesn’t quite have the same ring as ‘yay new motorbike!’ does it.

Having said that…… look how smooooth it is…

We poured the two different levels of the floor on two separate days, the first being the lower river side. It was just Graeme and I there to do the leveling, solely and completely due to this comment made by the concrete sales rep:

“This is self-leveling, free-flow concrete, we’ll pour it in through the window gap at the far end and it will pretty much spread itself out on its own: you’ll barely have to do anything.”

This was the biggest lie I have heard since this blond toff drove round in a bus telling us that leaving the EU would save £3 million a week. While it may have been ’more’ free flowing than your average concrete, it is in no way self-leveling over that distance. It quickly turned into one hardest days’ work of my life.

Concrete being pouring through window reveal

Trying to spread out and level the never ending supply of concrete pouring through the window. Five of the big spinning/wurly lorries we had in total. (and yes my inner 5 year old still thought they were super cool!)

Power floating the drying concrete...

The second pour on the higher ground floor area required a far bit more prep than the lower, as we had to build some fairly robust shuttering to hold the concrete where we wanted it while it set. This also involved creating a small ramp across the front doors of the building to the new floor height and a much larger ramp between the two floors.

The two old steps between the two levels before we started...

Steps taken out and floor above taken backwards to allow for a shallow ramp

Starting the ramp shuttering. Also you can see the re-bar been added to the stone wall to strengthen the new concrete retaining wall.

Finished shuttering from lower and upper level

Shuttering was then loaded with lots of ballast to help it stand up to the weight of the concrete 

I wasn’t going to be fooled by the reps marketing talk this time – I needed more man power for this pour. So once again I found myself, NOT stuck up a fell with a broken ankle – but I called Keswick mountain rescue anyway!

A huge thank you to Richard, Grahame and Big Chris for their help, especially as (and im being honest here – I could easily of left this part of the saga out!) my shuttering sprung a leak! I’ll use the saying ‘all’s well that ends well’, as this did end well. But I could have easily turned into a major disaster with all the wet concrete above pouring down over the new set concrete of the lower slab. We managed to find where it was getting through (at the bottom of the ramp shuttering) block it up and get all the escaped cement back up to the higher slab before it started to go off, or worse still give way completely.

The aftermath of the leak around the ramp

Finished ramp and retaining wall between the two levels

 Graeme trying to 'kick' the wet concrete out across the space! I mocked, but actually turned out to be a effective method.

Week 45-50 - River Roof, Wall and Externals

Bulk of the work is now done on the river wall so its time to see a before and after picture to boost our motivation now the summers (relative) warmth is long gone...

We had about a two week delay waiting to crack on with the roof while it rained, but finally my anti-rain dance worked and we got started (my version of this involved dancing in underwear in the spare room while the cat gives you a judgmental look) and just to prove how effective my dancing skills are we were then blessed with 2 dry weeks.

First off we needed a way to have access to actually do the work, and once again, someone has put a river right in my way.
In theory at least we could have put up standard scaffolding down into the river. However then the environment agency wanted to get involved and insist on all sorts of impact reports and restrictions etc etc. Which to be honest we don't have the time, money or (most importantly) patience for. So instead I decided to cantilever a wooden platform out the upstairs windows.

The bulk of the support for this platform was built of the new steel work for the balcony. Unfortunately this doesnt go the full length of the building, and we needed the platform too, so to support the platform further out we build these two supports at each end, bolted them down the the floor, and then stuck them through the windows.

All the temporary old steel sheets removed to reveal the new roof structure.

First as mentioned in the last blog entry we fitted all the glass and them felted and battened out between for the slate.

After much deliberation and discussion with the the planning department we have used reclaimed welsh slate. We were keen to go for  reclaimed as it will blend in with everything around it instantly and also for cost. Unfortunately you can only get  2nd hand Cumbrian slate in random length tiles. This isn't really a problem when you are doing a large single pitch roof as you just do multiple rows of ever decreasing length slates. However here we only actually have 5 sections of slate about 1.5 m2 each. I am of the very strong opinion it would have just looked a mess, and it turns out the national park planning authority agreed with me! - who knew that would happen.

Sophie decided she thought slating a roof looked like fun and wanted a go - I think maybe because it is, and I told her so every night when I got home. Unfortunately she only decided this once the roof was finished and point blank refused to go out on our 'totally rock solid' (or at least yet to be proved otherwise) temporary scaffold platform. So we improvised and tiled the ground level roof of the new bin shed instead, although she did still need a beer crate to stand on. As you can see, she did a grand job.

Note Sophs tool belt, I got serious brownie points for giving her this to wear! - she's so easily pleased