Tony K

I've just had 39 steel screw piles put in for a 100m2 SB on clay in Surrey, came in at about £40k, but beyond a certain point they charge by the linear metre so you'd want to have the ground tested first to have a better idea of final cost. Piling is clever stuff but terribly expensive, so exhaust the possibility of traditional footings first.

Evening all. My SB is built into the corners of my small plot, and has required me to excavate the footprint down about 800mm. Inside this area a host of steel screw piles have been inserted, and we are now beginning to create the slab. It's clay soil. The recipe for the slab is 50mm of concrete blinding laid on the soil, then 225mm of cordex (collapsible void former) on top, then the rebar gets attached to the pile heads, before the whole area is filled with concrete. Despite draining the surface several times, and the recent hot weather, the surface remains very boggy. We believe that though the clay is largely impermeable, some small amount of water is getting through - a white line is visible towards the base of the excavation walls which I presume is salt or something. Above the line the clay walls are bone dry, whilst below they are damp. This makes it hard to dry out the surface, and when we walk in it we sink in up to our ankles in places. This makes it hard to progress. We need the blinding to be solid enough to walk about on for a month or so while we build the rest of the slab, but as it stands the blinding will be pushed down into the bog when we walk on it. Possible solutions range from digging a ditch along the side and trying to drain from it, to extra deep blinding, to boarding the area prior to blinding it. One friend has suggested use of some kind of coir matting with crushed concrete over the top, though neither of us has any experience of this. Anyone faced and solved this problem before? Any ideas gratefully received as usual! Thanks

Thanks all. I think the conclusion of this is that a hand pulled pallet truck won't do the job. I'll either rent a motorised one or I'll get a decent trolley and get stuck in. Which of these options to go for will be dictated by whether I can get all my bricks, blocks, sand and cement delivered at once (in which case I'll hire the motor pallet truck and shift the lot that day) or, if the materials come in dribs and drabs I'll go for the trolley.

Do you say that based on experience of dragging pallets of blocks around? If so I would be very interested in how you got on!

You are now the second person to say this, and the first had seen my awesome physique too... My plan for materials was to leave pallets out on the road so that the delivery driver could lower the jumbo bags etc on to them, then I could drag them to site on the pallet truck. Perhaps I'll invest in a really good barrow and a trolley, and just get stuck in.

Nope. I can get a car or a van to the edge of the site but not a lorry. Using a pallet truck seems best if only to avoid double handling the blocks (presuming they do come on pallets to begin with, though round here they seem to).

Single storey, low walls, so shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks. Even so it is inside the weight limits the pallet truck can handle, so it's more about whether a person can drag that weight around once it's on wheels. For what it's worth, I'm a fairly big bloke and not afraid of a bit of effort. I just have no clue whether dragging a pallet of blocks is feasible. I presume it is, or why invent the all terrain pallet truck?

They do look good, and the spec I've just looked at from one hire firm suggests they can handle the weight. If these maths are correct.. A block is 17kg, a pallet has 44 blocks, so that's about 750kgs a pallet. The truck can apparently handle that weight, but can I? I'll be dragging the pallets up a very mild slope. My instinct is that once the weight is on wheels it should be fine, but that's only a guess really.

Hi Does anyone have any clever tips for moving pallets of blocks around without a forklift? My plot has tricky access, and it will be necessary for me to have the blocks delivered about 50m away from the edge of the site, then carry them to site myself over a fairly good, though not totally level concrete surface. I had thought of buying a second hand pallet truck to drag the blocks around on the pallets they come on, though I am not sure if the weight will prove too great? Any ideas / experiences gratefully received. Thanks

Seems like the kind of thing where you'd want to see one in person. At those prices they are obviously not pretending to be top of the range, but that doesn't mean that they aren't up to scratch.

I suppose the difference in my case compared to some is that I don't want an oversized front door, or one that turns on a pivot. I can imagine that the engineering requirements for either are significant and almost certainly beyond my DIY skills, but I could have a crack at modifying a standard front door, probably by cladding it, to give it a non standard appearance. Thanks for all the discussion and ideas all.

That's interesting. I could see what that costs vs the other options. Another idea I've had is to buy something like this: https://www.screenwithenvy.co.uk/products/larbre-corten-garden-screen?variant=31461792284715&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&cmp_id=11450961827&adg_id=112868478460&kwd=&device=c&gclid=Cj0KCQjws-OEBhCkARIsAPhOkIblkVsPP-kzA9Ij7Yx0-C8vWjBpqH48jWDsFNcavPyhIxqWYGJTzB4aAuUuEALw_wcB ...and pin it to a blank door. If I set it about 10mm from the face of the blank door I could even backlight it in some subtle way.

In either timber or some sort of metal this kind of thing appeals, though it need not be a swivel door:

Right, so buy a standard blank door with frame to match, then customise both?

That's the kind of thing I had imagined. As you say, I can buy a blank door and add to it. I presume I would then ask a chippy to produce a frame that fits the resultant door rather than buying a standard one?

Well, I don't have such a mate, but even commercially the material itself doesn't seem too expensive?

Timber rather than steel is another idea I've considered. I quite like timber in horizontal panels. My concern would be that whereas metal would be robust in a thin sheet, I presume timber cladding would need to be thicker? What timber did you use, and were you please with the result?

Less than a grand? Now you're talking! Thats is a very interesting idea. I may even be able to place that folded sheet around a simple timber frame rather than an old door, and place insulation on the voids?

Gotcha. though I have never encountered a proper expensive posh door, so I won't know any better! As the song says, if I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor! This is my thinking precisely. I only want a solid door with no windows, so I'm only affixing one whole thin sheet to a door, or perhaps several equally sized strips, which should make it easier. Given the low cost of 2nd hand heavy doors on ebay, and the relative low cost of sheets of various materials, I might just have a go. Unless anyone has any suggestions for reasonably priced doors of this type?

I thought so! Mind you, if I had a normal timber front door with normal hinges etc, and I just stuck a sheet of thin material to the front, making holes carefully for the key hole and post box, that could work? In theory?

Hi all, I am interested in a contemporary, statement front door like these: https://camelglass.co.uk/liquid-metal-front-entrance-doors/ Initial research suggests these things are very expensive for what they are. I wonder if anyone has any advice on the following: 1. Are they always as expensive as I have found so far (thousands rather than hundreds for a door)? 2. Is there any merit in taking a standard old timber door and seeking to attach sheet material to it, thereby achieving a similar effect? Thanks

Out of interest, any idea what a good garden designer charges?

Good idea. Ta very much for that.

I was tempted by tarmac simply because of the available edge treatments. You can buy some sort of spray to apply to the edges of the excavated area, and a sealing strip to melt on top of the edge of new repair. These things apparently combine to prevent cracks at the edges when liquid gets in and turns to ice in winter. What sort of mix of concrete / sand would you use then, and would you want to include any special treatment (fibres etc) for the mix?