saveasteading

Granolithic. Extremely hard concrete, made with small granite chips. It used to be a specialist business to lay it. Used in areas of very high abrasion as a capping on normal concrete. The companies I knew diversified into general industrial concrete flooring.

I would knock it down, and I try to reuse where at all feasible. Converting agricultural to domestic is tricky. The structure is underdesigned for himsan use (no safety factors) including the foundations. Also it is a pain to connect to concrete frames even if in decent condition, and repairing is expensive. If steel, extra columns can be added but concrete no. Planning issues aside of course.

I'm pretty sure there are screed mixes to which you can add sand and place it thicker. That could go down in one layer. Or fix insulation. Different thicknesses as suits the levels, and screed over. Or use concrete where thick and latex where thin. 2 days? Flooring asphalt sounds expensive.

£40,000?

That's what we did once it was a clear run past connections. On top of a straight 3m timber for an overall check. But you won't get most site or project managers going down a trench to check. So do you trust the groundworker? Good that's OK then. I had a long drain run once, to a soakaway chamber 1.5m wide. The gw ignored 1:100 on his drawing and as instructed , and used 1:60. He didn't have to buy the extra pc ring and didn't understand the fuss: "all drains go in at 1:60". Only later did I wonder how much gravel he would have poured in for his ease. Gws were hard to get at the time.

If it is too high to build above then it has to go, and join the crushed pile, then can go back down again in the new construction. If it can be built on, and high is good in houses esp with any flood risk, then it can probably stay instead of, or as well as, sub base. Too often they are broken out pointlessly.

Why would you be? Actuaally i will answer this myself. We put in 90% of the drains ourselves, at the designed 1:60. This after sacking the groundworker who ignored the spec and did it 'just off the bubble' as they put it. At their slope the 70m runs would have been very deep indeed. Ie 3m instead of 2m. So 1:60 is fine as long as it really is. The first qualification of a groundworker is hard work in wet trenches. Sums and quality are down the list so they need management, usually.

Quite right. Much worse than thighs for most persons.

I don't know about Scotland, but in England they test 1 in 10 (?) on an estate. The developer knows which they will be and they scrape a pass. The rest are porous. These houses were all on large developments.

I've just come down from the Windy City reference? How about Edinburgh?

Summary of the summary. People are preferring warm bedrooms recently. They have high co2 in winter. Mvhr is sometimes appropriate but only if well designed and very easy to control. Lots of new builds don't comply with bldg regs.

It won't be necessarily better (than expensive sub-base) but it will be clean, and you must get it down to a size.. You will certainly need some bed under the new area of slab. Are you retained the existing slab assuming there is one, or breaking out and replacing,?

I think I have seen on housing developments that they sometimes use window templates, so the wall is built against it and a window 20mm smaller is guaranteed to fit, and can be ordered early. This works best with standard size, multiple windows of course. On our project, the kit part was built with care to the squareness and dims, and that didn't look difficult to me. Where fitting into granite openings it was much more difficult to even measure. Some stone had to be nibbled off.

I'm not sure it would even lift the bucket. It will be a very big machine. Handy all round as it can reach high and far to lift or break out the rafters...then squash them. I don't have names for you. Knock up an email to describe the project, including timing. Make it clear you are an individual not a business. With an informal email you can circulate to loads of demo companies without wasting their time, some of which will show interest. Not just local, include medway where the heavy work happens, and Sussex because it is not Sevenoaks. If I remember properly you have to make or extend a driveway. This hardcore will suit being on the bottom. Are you building new on the footprint?

How nice for them that they can deny expertise and risk. It is risky that you have to measure the openings, they don't know how accurately you have done it, and they decide tolerances. On our project we bought the units direct. Even as seasoned experts we made a costly mistake with a window into an irregular opening. Good idea to switch I think.

1:60 is fine. Just make sure it goes in to that all the way and doesn't have flatter areas. As the table shows, flatter is ok for heavier flow which you will probably have occasionally. 110mm will flow better than 150mm because the flow is more concentrated/deeper.

Agreed technically, but i think there will be multiple bruises on thighs from these corners.

There are multiple interfaces in construction where the responsibility is blurred. The window manufacturer doesn't measure opening sizes, check the suitability of the structure, or tell you how to fix the frames. If the glass breaks next year through stresses, who's issue is it....yours. You can, if prepared to pay for the service and them taking the risk, get a supply and fit service. They tend to use one or 2 systems and have their methods of fixing. They also make their own assessment of tolerances around the window. Missing out middle men means you take on more risk and management. 10mm wriggle room. Yes about that although one guy told me he allowed 20mm on upstairs windows because nobody can see it! I didnt use him. Make sure this 10mm is outside the rectangle that the window will be, as openings may not be 'square'.

In kent this has no value unless you keep it on site. It would be taken away to a quarry or random yard, and you get nothing for it but do pay the haulage. It is then crushed and sold, at commercial rates, perhaps back to you. Some operators have strict control and even grade it as type 1. Etc. But some is delivered with junk mixed in. Wood, plastic, soil. I have had toilet seat, snooker ball, multiple springs (?). Once rejected 2 loads and had no argument, but still had the junk on site. Also once did a spot visit and found 2 piles being fed into the crusher...one of rubble and one of earth. Hence...crush on site. To be fair, one well known supplier allowed me to visit, and has a clean pile of rubble, they send away any loads they don't like, and they grade it by size after crushing. They pay nothing for hardcore received. And that crusher tool on the end of the digger is fun.

Ok something i know about. The asbestos cement has to be removed and disposed of with a certificate. You can diy this but i suggest you don't, as a demo company will be very efficient. Shouldnt say demo, as it is dismantling. Then the frames. There is a market for concrete frames. They are cut off at ground level so gradually get smaller, farm by farm. Allow for them getting taken apart for zero. But if you will need hardcore then the best plan is to crush on site as in the video above. The machine looks like a dinosaur. Just insist that it is crushed again to ensure usefully small pieces. The demo people will take the tangled steel away. It is such a spaghetti mess that there is more air than steel. In summary, a demo company to do the whole job. One price to take away and another to keep the hardcore. The foundations are still there. Either the groundworker takes them out or you try to integrate them.

Single size gravel will not bind. The sizes quoted are what has gone through a sieve of that size. Some could be much bigger in one direction. So you have to see samples. The 3 mm is almost sand. This will be stronger but a bit functional. For a footpath, 10mm is fine.

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No. But I spoke to many teachers 6 or 12 months later, and they all said that it was between good air quality and the best they had worked in. I expect that heads, bursers and PMs also visited our previous projects before awarding us their projects. On the other extreme, our preferred m&e contractor tokd me of new county schools jampacked with computerised ventilation kit. Windows and fans were linked to heating and heat recovery and sensors to a central system. They had been called in because it wasn't working. The janitor explained that the best device was the red button in the plant room, which turned it all to manual. In hindsight a meter would have been interesting, used surrepticiusly. But our noses are fairly accurately programmed.

NO. These are holding down bolts, not holding up. It isn't a bad idea to build on the bolts as a temporary measure, but it has to be grouted up. Even 24mm bolts are liable to bend under vertical and rotational loading. And the column isn't just sitting on bolts, but on the threads of 4 nuts. It could work but needs detailed calculation.

You should be able to tap the screws into the wood to get started, so no skin stripping required.