Sunday, December 02, 2007
Concrete floor laid
Been a bit slow blogging the concrete floor day. After the last week or so of hectic digging and preparation for the 'big' day I've been mostly sleeping and relaxing. Anyway,
The concrete mixer lorry turned up on Thursday as arranged at 8:30 with 6 cubic meters of concrete for the two rooms. The day before several wooden battens at the correct level were placed across the floors. Each 6m batten was supported every meter or so with small piles of mortar to stop them flexing when a straight edge was drawn/shuffled across the top.
There was a slight delay unloading the concrete because I had ordered the conveyor belt attached to the lorry so the concrete didn't need to be wheelbarrowed in. The driver said he didn't have enough room to extend the conveyor and so a few phone calls had to be made to the supplier to arrange a rebate for the conveyor before he would start unloading. After that was sorted we had to use wheelbarrows to unload but as it turned out it wasn't too bad, just a little frenetic as the concrete really rushes down the chute.
Once all the load was in it was relatively easy to shuffle the straight edge left and right across the top of the battens to level the concrete off and pull the excess back to the doorways. By the time we had finished there was only about 5 wheelbarrows too much. Better than being short.
Once we had finished the surface was fairly flat but had a few ripples in it. With hindsight we should have gone back and repeated the process but quite a bit of water rises to the surface as you 'work' the concrete and it was difficult to keep the liquid 'tide' at bay. I'd also been advised that it was possible to come back just as the concrete is setting and use a float to go over the surface and smooth out any ripples and lumps. By the end of Thursday, coming back later with a float seemed like a great proposition.
Having taken a bucket of concrete home to test how cured it was (I didn't fancy driving back at midnight to find it too hard/soft) I went back the following morning float in hand. It turned out that my bucket set slower than the floor and I was a few hours too late. The ripples aren't too back and I reckon I should be able to tile over it, but it wasn't as flat as I hoped. The moral being, don't put off 'til tomorrow what you can do today.
For all the work and deliveries I've had up to now, I have only ever paid a deposit then the balance on delivery or completion. It's standard advice. However, the concrete supplier insisted on full payment up front or no delivery. I should have gone somewhere else, but didn't. So the cockup with the conveyor ended up costing me an 'admin' fee for a rebate on the unused conveyor. I wish they had mentioned that they needed 20m of clear space before I ordered the belt.
Even with the minor hiccups the good news is the floors are in and curing over the weekend. All the pipework is in place for the septic tank guys on Monday and it feels like a real milestone on the project.
| 6:24:16 PM
Concrete floor laid
