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A New Learning Curve


Faz

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Hi All

 

An interesting one - I am a surveyor (25 years Chartered until I got fed up with sending the RICS a £700 payment a year for nothing!) with 30 years post qualification experience and have previously 'built' big sheds, offices, 100+ bed hotels and large London resi schemes - 80 units+ at a time.

 

I am about to undertake a scheme of 3 houses (one of them being for me)...

 

Now here is the issue - on my previous schemes I have always had an established site team of PM and numerous site managers to deal with the day to day issues while was dealing with the higher level stuff - finance, letting and legals and the like.  A scheme of 3 houses in northern Cambs is not going to stand such costs so I am it! I have drawn up our CPP which I am pretty happy with and have got the site set up sorted.  It became apparent that none of the contractors here carry a valid ticket for our telehandler so I went and took the course last week (£1250!) so will take care of that.  Not looking forward to offloading the brick lorry mind with the driver getting grumpy if I take my time - he will just have to suck it up I suppose.

 

My worry is that, while I have a great take on the 'big picture' stuff, my knowledge of the real detail items is limited - potentially a dangerous combo!

 

Main concern at the moment is floor makeup - we are using a Floorspan Efloor Plus beam and poly infill floor - Plots 1 & 2 (not to be mine) have 100mm poly sheet over with a 65mm screed to go on top - mine has a 150mm poly top sheet with u/f to go on top with a 65 - 75mm screed - it is doing my head in thinking about how this relates to the block coursing over the beam.

 

Anyway we got the P1 footings in Thurs / Fri of last week (I am up on the Fen north of Huntingdon and we have left it really last before the weather / water table makes the site unviable until next May!). P2 excavation tomorrow with mass pour on Tues with mine to follow Wed / Thurs with mass pour all day on Friday - worked mine out today as 68 cube into the footing...

 

Plot 1 foundation.jpg

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8 hours ago, Faz said:

...

My worry is that, while I have a great take on the 'big picture' stuff, my knowledge of the real detail items is limited - potentially a dangerous combo!

 

Main concern at the moment....

 

... is the first of very many to come. Trick is to enjoy them somehow. 

 

When you find out how let me know eh?

Welcome 

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I cannot see your problem with block coursing, your blocks will run up level with the outside brickwork, it’s off no consequence how much insulation you have, it’s down to your beam depth, a standard 150 deep beam should course nicely with the outside brickwork. 

One row of coursing blocks on top of the beams and you will be back level with the brickwork. 

 

Hope thats what you meant. 

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11 hours ago, Faz said:

It became apparent that none of the contractors here carry a valid ticket for our telehandler so I went and took the course last week (£1250!) so will take care of that.  Not looking forward to offloading the brick lorry mind with the driver getting grumpy if I take my time - he will just have to suck it up I suppose.


Welcome ...! 
 

Quick tip if you’ve hired that JCB Telehandler ... never park them up with boom extended as they can throw restart errors. You also risk the damage to the boom by other stuff such as your dumper or 360 hitting it as the boom sections are black and not easily seen... That is a £10k repair ..!

 

If you want to practice then get a stack of pallets and move them about for an hour. You’ll soon get used to how the machine responds. 

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I did my ticket last week (£1250 plus vat) so good to go on the forks - you are spot on with the comment though - park it up in travel mode with the forks on the ground and even every time you  leave it.

 

I have to say though that the handbrake on thing before adjusting the boom went out of the window early doors - am talking about tweaks on levels running over the site btw.  We bought the machine rather than have it on hire - £1560 pcm we were quoted for hire - bought it for £26k. 

 

Dug & poured Plot 1 last week, dug plot 2 today with the pour tomorrow and mine is a 2 day dig with the pour on Friday.   All rain dances are banned!

 

It is starting to cut up bad!

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The plot 1 foundation wasn't as much of a success story as I had hoped - the lad on the concrete pump must have dozed off and poured over the nails setting out the levels - we were 50mm up in one corner - brickie not happy (mind you - when have you ever found a happy brickie?)  Plot 2 went better as I stood over them - >5mm tolerance.  My monster goes in tomorrow. The ground is cutting up real bad - we are on peat here so I ordered 160 tonne of 50mm clean for Monday to stone up the rear of the plots.

 

 

P3_foundation.jpg

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We already had them mate from our last job in London - needed to stick them somewhere so brought them up here.  I just thought that spacing them around the holes to protect idiot trespassers from themselves didn't hurt.  We will use them going forward to try and segregate pedestrian areas from vehicle zones.  If we didn't have them I wouldn't have bought them specially for this job tbh.

 

We brought a whole container of surplus kit from the last job (92 flats in Bromley) and not sure what we are going to do with a lot of it - 15 - 20 Graffe & Forza walnut FD30 doors of varying sizes - not going to use them here if anyone is interested?  I reckon I have enough architrave to do at least 2 plots here all free courtesy of Graffe - they had no idea what they were shipping day to day that lot.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Made some fairly decent progress - all 3 foundations dug and poured with minimal waste concrete (3 - 4 cube for the 3 houses plus the quad garage - I can live with that).  240T of 50mm clean limestone spread around the plots.  The clay goes away next week (I found a local farmer who wants the stuff so loading and transport costs only - £2000 all in).

 

Got water and power (borrowed from the neighbor) laid in yesterday so teas are now available in the cabin & water there for the mixing station.  Getting tea laid on must be milestone No 2 after getting the concrete in!

 

Bricks & blocks etc arrive next week and the brickie starts on the 3rd Nov.  Game on.

 

 

Stone.jpg

Stone 2.jpg

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1 minute ago, Big Jimbo said:

Total result on the local farmer.

Big time!

 

It never hurts to ask.

 

He wants us to drop 20T of limestone in his access as the quid pro quo - £275 + VAT - I can live with that.  Our muck away quote was £130 + VAT per load and it wouldn't surprise me if there were 100+ loads there (especially as it is raining!).

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Faz said:

Big time!

 

It never hurts to ask.

 

He wants us to drop 20T of limestone in his access as the quid pro quo - £275 + VAT - I can live with that.  Our muck away quote was £130 + VAT per load and it wouldn't surprise me if there were 100+ loads there (especially as it is raining!).

 

 

£360 a load where i am, and as you say, don't get much in when wet. We are badly ripped off down here in the Shires.

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That is outrageous!  I am in a 'shire' too - thankfully a much cheaper Cambridgeshire!  Tbh, at that price, it might be worth you giving some of the people up here a ring (provided your shire is not Berkshire or Bucks) . My stone lorries (same chap) are coming 40 miles to my site.

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5 minutes ago, Faz said:

That is outrageous!  I am in a 'shire' too - thankfully a much cheaper Cambridgeshire!  Tbh, at that price, it might be worth you giving some of the people up here a ring (provided your shire is not Berkshire or Bucks) . My stone lorries (same chap) are coming 40 miles to my site.

Im in south West Herts. Not far outside the M25. My daughter is in Wistow in Cambs, so a fair distance unfortunately.

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Even if you had to pay double their local rate you would be quids in!

 

Wistow - blimey - just down the road from me! About 2 miles I would say, just the other side of Upwood.

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