Garage Build Start - slow

[Carrerahill]

Well those of you who read my introduction may well know that I am planning on building a new garage and converting a sun room into a proper room for a new kitchen.

 

Anyway, I have started the garage, although I still have no planning permission I have started the ground works, even if there are changes in the proposed garage much of what I have done so far still needs to be done - even if we were outright denied planning I would still pave this area for parking - hence works not a waste.

 

I have not fully exposed the site to keep the garden secure for now but I have cut in most of the shear key for the concrete and then dug the trench for the rear found - it needs squared off etc. but that was the first dig to get it all into rough shape.

 

I will have a 1.5ton excavator soon so I can scrape the rest of the site, I am also building up the lawn/dropping the patio as part of these works so the current lawn will be dug up, then a deeper hole or trench dug that the gravel from the garage site can be dropped into a good few feet down (if it was cleaner I would have used it for the first layer before hardcore for the concrete - I guess I still could), then working carefully I will then scrape the good topsoil off and that can go into the lawn. Then I will lift a big patio, scrape the sand and whatever else is down there off, if good sand I will work that into the soil for the lawn, then basically pull the whole patio area down into the current lawn, I will then basically accept whatever level that leaves me with, but it will be the same level throughout with a very slight incline to the garage.

 

I will keep this posted as stuff happens. This will be a true build thread and it will be slow as I am doing it after work and weekends as well as other projects and interests. 

 

 

[Nickfromwales]

3 hours ago, Carrerahill said:

This will be a true build thread and it will be slow as I am doing it after work and weekends as well as other projects and interests. 

It's a race between your job and @Onoff's bathroom . 

Now, where to put my money ......?

[Onoff]

Ooh! What I'd never get around to doing with a digger.....

[Nickfromwales]

I'm just worried now that you'll try and make one 

[Construction Channel]

Build a digger you say. How hard can it be ....... I recon @Onoff is the man for the job 

[Onoff]

I'll start another thread so as not to detract from @Carrerahill's!

[Nickfromwales]

No you won't! ?

[ProDave]

On 2017-5-9 at 18:49, Nickfromwales said:

I'm just worried now that you'll try and make one 

When he's finished the electric wacker plate.

[Nickfromwales]

Ok, a bit of a digression from the op . I'm not going to point the finger of blame..........

 

On 9 May 2017 at 12:18, Carrerahill said:

I will have a 1.5ton excavator soon

 

So you've dug out by hand so far?  

[Ferdinand]

On 09/05/2017 at 20:14, Construction Channel said:

Build a digger you say. How hard can it be ....... I recon @Onoff is the man for the job 

 

Isn't that a Mexican standonoff - @Onoff working out where he is going to keep the digger while he builds a garage to keep the digger in.

 

PS Welcome Carerrahill.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Ferdinand
For relevance

[Carrerahill]

6 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Ok, a bit of a digression from the op . I'm not going to point the finger of blame..........

 

 

So you've dug out by hand so far?  

I have yes, not too bad really, with the glorious weather it has made for quite a few very sweaty grubby days. The ground is gravel on membrane, then gravelly soil and a lot of pea gravel and old building supplies from a previous extension, so lots of sand and hardcore and stuff, that is the hard bit, then it's top quality soil for about 300mm which I shovelled into buckets and dumped in a pile on my lawn which was hard going - I have a barrow now! Then it's hard hard clay which takes a lot of breaking up and once broken becomes a nice sandy consistency so does shovel well. 

 

I have now squared that trench off and checked all my lines (I will recheck again on Saturday before the concrete goes in). I will then get a block wall built up to ground level.

 

So what do you think of this plan:

 

Use the excavator is to dig up a fair chunk of the old lawn down to the hard clay, probably down at the lower end (which I want to raise about 300-400mm) I expect this will be a 300-400mm dig of soil, then dump all the gravelly stuff already removed from the garage site directly onto the clay, then scrape the whole garage site of the gravel and gravel containing soil and the clay sand from the trench and dump it in the lawn, I am also going to remove a section of the car parking area from the front garden which is a mix of hard core, sand and river pebbles, I will save as many river pebbles as I can to top up areas where I will retain these, once all of the sites are down to soil I can then level out all the gravelly mixed stuff out on the lawn site and compact it. Then I will go back to the garage site and scrape the required amount of topsoil off to allow for the hardcore/concrete, then I will re-level the lawn with the original soil, compact it then top it all off with the good soil from the garage site etc. 

 

Generally does this sound like an acceptable method and best use of what I have to achieve what I need, I expect the lawn will have 300-400mm of soil over the gravelly stuff so I do expect it will work well, I will for sure use pre-turf soil before the lawn goes down.

 

This then gives me a level to work with. If it is way short I will then need to think about removing the patio and lowering it, again spreading the scrapings around to get a new general height, if it is only off by say 100mm I will just bite the bullet and buy in more top soil.

 

At that I can lay my new lawn and install a lawn to the small section at the front, the car can temporarily park on the scraped garage site. 

 

Then it's hardcore time, shutter the site up (using the block wall for the rear shutter) and hope to get a pour in for the end of May - lets hope planning is in by then as I won't pour concrete until the garage location has been approved.

 

I did have a thought about the concrete from the old drive, when I dig down to the clay on the lawn site, do you think I could put the concrete down on top of the clay, this will help to elevate this area quite quickly, I would even make it proud of the current level, so by the time a 300mm cover of soil is over it it will help to create the little slope I will need so the lawn can drop back down to the original level. See sketch. 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Carrerahill

[Carrerahill]

Had a little dig about at lunch there and found my own quarry! Looks like the previous owners builders or maybe landscapers have dumped a big builders bucket full of sand and aggregate, I carefully dug around the perimeter then started to extract it into the barrow. That will just do nicely for my concrete!

 

I will dig the rest out tomorrow.

 

Also, see image of the spoil from the excavations (picture doesn't do the heap justice, that is a good 900-1000mm high and 2400mm x 1800mm heap) just to give you an idea of what I have heaps of and will generate more! Just to show what I am planning on using as back fill to raise the lawn.

 

Also, looking at it I am going to have HEAPS of peagravel and river pebbles, even if I top up some areas and keep a load for filling down the side of new paths and whatnot could I use some as the first fill before hardcore for the garage slab?

 

I am not trying to be cheap here as such, I am trying to be smart. I just see a lot of potential from a lot of good material that I have gone to the effort of keeping separated during my digging and don't see the point in skipping it all to pay for other material to come back.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Carrerahill

[Carrerahill]

Update:

 

Saturday it was pouring, first rain in 6 weeks, typical! It dried up in the afternoon and I went back to the trenches, got my levelling pegs in and scraped one end down a little to make sure I got a minimum of 150mm - but probably more like 175/200!

 

I went to Trade Point and got 6 bags of cement (already had 4) and some sharp sand and all in 1 - I have loads of aggregate already and the 'quarry' remember! 

 

So Sunday I fired up the mixer and went for it. I was using a whole bag of cement which is more than '1' in the standard C25 ratio so should be well over a C25, slump was good too, I could tip a bucket and it kept it's shape well - I was happy.

 

I ended up doing about 8-10 mixer loads, just kept going to get a good pour. I exhausted my 'quarry', and was left with some sharp sand and 2 bags of OPC so that's a bonus.

 

I am still not sure what the 'quarry' was all about, once fully excavated it appears to be a piece of plastic storm drain pipe about 400mm deep, 1200mm dia that was sat into the subsoil then filled with sand and aggregate. I wonder if it was a way for the them to contain their materials at the time, then it was membraned over and the whole area covered in river pebbles... Anyway, it's all been used in the concrete and also means when I come to scrape that site I have an area to dump some of the spoil to make it back up to a reasonable height. I am tempted to take the pipe section out and use it elsewhere in the garden for a soakaway catchment area if I fill it with gravel and cover over.

 

 

[Onoff]

You don't think you might have excavated a home built soakaway do you?

[Carrerahill]

31 minutes ago, Onoff said:

You don't think you might have excavated a home built soakaway do you?

The thought had crossed my mind!

 

There is no pipe running into it and I cannot work out what it would be soaking away being where it is, unless it is the remnants of one.

 

Our house is built on the highest point of a hill so I don't see someone trying to improve drainage as such, and the house is old enough the gutters would be connected to the main sewer. If it was a home made soakaway then it's a poor attempt.

 

I will probably use it for the garage roof gutter catchment/soakaway system I am going to build.

[Onoff]

Cap to something? Cellar? Fallout shelter? Well? Realise you're at the top of a hill. (Jack n Jill etc )

[Carrerahill]

27 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Cap to something? Cellar? Fallout shelter? Well? Realise you're at the top of a hill. (Jack n Jill etc )

 

If it dries up I will have a dig about tonight and let you know. I would hate to concrete over a fallout shelter or something, if it is, perfect location as my garage can become the new secret entrance! 

 

Am I being to hopeful?

 

 

[Onoff]

1 hour ago, Carrerahill said:

 

If it dries up I will have a dig about tonight and let you know. I would hate to concrete over a fallout shelter or something, if it is, perfect location as my garage can become the new secret entrance! 

 

Am I being to hopeful?

 

 

 

Joking aside a short while ago somebody found a shelter in their back garden. WW2 vintage I think. They cut a hole in the roof and fitted a BFO skylight. Now using it as a garden room / cinema from memory!   

 

Happens quite often it seems. I believe the SOE had a few secreted and filled with provisions in case of Nazi invasion!

 

Yours is probably just an old long drop!

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

When I was a small boy, the house we lived in at the time had a large brick built air raid shelter in the garden.  It was dug into the steep hill at the back of the garden, so was almost completely underground, except for part of one wall at the front, with a sort of labyrinth entrance (presumably to limit shrapnel getting inside).  We lived around 1/4 mile away from the Martin Baker factory, which I would guess is why the shelter was built - Martin Baker may well have been a target during the war.

 

A friend and I found the wreckage of a crashed aircraft buried in the woods nearby, and managed to dig up an old gun and loads of ammunition (around .303 calibre).  the brickwork in the exposed wall of the old shelter wasn't in great condition, and we managed to make a small hole at a mortar joint, just big enough to stick one of the rounds in.  The game was to stick a live round in the hole, then chuck rocks at it until we made it go off, with the bullet ricocheting around the inside of the shelter.  Needless to say, the loud bangs attracted attention and we both got marched off to see the village policeman, and hand over all the ammunition we'd collected......

[Onoff]

@JSHarris I wonder if it's worth @Carrerahill checking his location on your borehole link if you have it?

 

I found two about 100m either side of the house I knew nothing about.

[Jeremy Harris]

Might be.  Here's the link to the interactive map: http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html

 

Click the top button "Borehole scans" and zoom right in at your location and you should see if there are any recorded nearby, and be able to read the drill logs if they've been made public, and if the driller filed them (they are supposed to,  but ours didn't, I submitted the log to the BGS myself).

[Carrerahill]

10 minutes ago, Onoff said:

@JSHarris I wonder if it's worth @Carrerahill checking his location on your borehole link if you have it?

 

I found two about 100m either side of the house I knew nothing about.

 

Just had a look at the BGS site for borehole scans and nothing showed up, however one down the road shoes the makeup of the ground and it's similar to my findings at the depths I am at. Boulder Clay seems to be prevalent.

 

That would help explain some of the rather nice big boulders I have pulled out the the ground, I am hoping to find enough to build a little wall or rockery section next to the new garage.

 

[Carrerahill]

10 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Might be.  Here's the link to the interactive map: http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html

 

 

Right, I have just wasted too long reading borehole reports!! Very interesting stuff.

 

I guess the confidential ones hit gold and diamonds!

[Declan52]

More likely contamination in them. Checked beside me and there are none logged even though I did 3 for a Vodafone mast. 

Just watch digging trenches in soil with a lot of sand and gravel as the sides won't stay there for long esp if there is a water strike.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Declan52 said:

More likely contamination in them. Checked beside me and there are none logged even though I did 3 for a Vodafone mast. 

Just watch digging trenches in soil with a lot of sand and gravel as the sides won't stay there for long esp if there is a water strike.

 

My experience was that our drillers didn't bother to file the log with the BGS, even though they are supposed to, and it was included in the standard spec.  The lady I spoke to at the BGS said it was very common for drilling companies to not bother to send them the logs, and was happy to email me the forms so I could file the details of ours.  I couldn't give a lot of detail about the strata, because I wasn't there all the time, plus there was a certain amount of error about the depth...............

 

However, I did my best, so now we are on the BGS map: http://scans.bgs.ac.uk/sobi_scans/boreholes/19993639/images/19993635.html