A142 & A252 MESH - Highlands

[Jenki]

Does anyone have any suppliers in or around Inverness for Reinforcement mesh?  lots online but they wont deliver to KW3 postcodes, and if they do my best delivery quote had been £1200🤣 which I take as we don't want the order.

 

 

 

[jamieled]

HIS? Keyline delivered our mesh but I can't remember the cost. Most of merchants seem to make trips out and about the sticks, it might depend on whether they've got any other deliveries in the area. So even if the big retailers such as Jewsons/TP etc give ridiculous costs or say no online I'd be phoning them up.

[Russell griffiths]

If you are going to go through this delivery drama a bit, can you do it American style and forget the mesh and buy 12mm straight bar and use this as slab reinforcement.

They normally put it at 450 centres.

Could be easier to collect 12mm bar.

Just a thought.  

[GavH]

Get in touch with Allans of Gillock, they might be able to help out with the supply of mesh

[ProDave]

There must be builders merchants in Wick who will deliver?

[saveasteading]

We have been getting sensible delivery costs for 25 miles out of inverness, from HIS, Travis, MKM. And better (£15) from the nearest merchant who won''t cover you though.

The mesh itself is very expensive. £32 and £82 / sheet of 3.6 x 2m

 

For half our floor slab we are going to use fibre-mesh (plastic fibres in the mix) this will cost £1/m2 and free delivery with the  concrete, so is a huge saving. It depends on many other factors, but we only need crack control. Why only half? too late to convince the SE, who I don't think even knew of the existence of the product. 

[rco]

Try Central Rebar in Alloa — they wholesale to lots of other places and commercial sites, and are happy to do small orders too, cut to size, the works. VASTLY cheaper than Travis/etc. I feel like they'll have shipping/contacts for you as well. Worth a call.

[Gus Potter]

12 hours ago, Jenki said:

Does anyone have any suppliers in or around Inverness for Reinforcement mesh?  lots online but they wont deliver to KW3 postcodes, and if they do my best delivery quote had been £1200🤣 which I take as we don't want the order.

 

 

 

What is the mesh required for?

 

Generally the A type meshes are to control cracking only rather than acting a true reinforcing bars like you would have in a reinforced concrete beam or floor slab in an office floor. You'll often see on a drawing A142, A193 or A252 meshes specified. If this is the only mesh shown on the drawing and there are no other individual bars attached to the mesh then it is likely for crack control only.

 

The are other types of meshes called structural meshes and these start with the letter B.

 

If you have an A type mesh then as @saveasteading says explore using plastic fibres as you could save a lot.

 

Post more info if you want to investigate option further.

 

 

 

 

 

[Jenki]

@Gus Potter / @saveasteading Thanks, the mesh is for 2 jobs, the foundations of our pods and the insulated raft for the house.

all foundations are laid on bedrock.

 A252 is for a 600mm strip around the perimeter of the foundations with 50mm cover, this is a thicker section of the the footing, then A142 is used centrally over the whole slab. So I assume this is more crack control. Will look into fibres as an alternative and run this by the SE.

[saveasteading]

10 hours ago, Jenki said:

Will look into fibres as an alternative and run this by the SE.

Our SE told us that fibres were not considered as too expensive. I think he may have been thinking of steel fibres as used for airport runways and for military tank strength.

The plastic fibres are made by SIKA who were very helpful in persuading the SE that this was not something new.

Local concrete suppliers  both quoted an additional £9/m3 for fibres, so you can work out how much cheaper this is. The only trouble is that it is sticky to handle (no slump).

 

I first used fibres about 35 years ago. There are issues, but as a sub-layer I have no problem in specifying it. We will use 150m2, so it saves us a lot.

 

Steel mesh provides a little comfort if the ground is iffy. But with rock underneath nothing is about to move.

[Jenki]

On 02/06/2022 at 18:00, saveasteading said:

The plastic fibres are made by SIKA who were very helpful in persuading the SE that this was not something new.

Hi, Did you contact the tech help via the website  https://gbr.sika.com/en/construction/concrete/contact-us/send-us-an-enquiry.html ?

or did you have a contact?   My SE, although not dismissing this, is coming back with vague, short  answers, (the invoice has been paid🤣).  He's questioning the volume of fibres for the mix, so I think it might be better to get some technical from SIKA and go back with that for him to confirm yes or no.

 

[Jenki]

Ok, to close this thread.

@saveasteading and @Gus Potter suggested Fibres as an alternative .

 

 The main house slab - Sika advise that as this is an insulated raft Fibres are not a suitable replacement for the A142 / A252 mesh as it is not a ground bearing slab. 

For the two pods, they were happy to supply a spec for these, if Increased the slab depth by 50mm to 150mm.

I did this, and the result was to use 4KG of fibre per M3 of a HPP50 fibre, (initial goggleing suggest £20 / Kg)

so the upshot is little saving.

 

@GavH  Allan's of Gillock have provided a reasonable quote inc delivery. - Thanks

 

A142 - £5.90 / M2

A252 - £9.28/M2 as of June 2022

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Jenki
added detail

[saveasteading]

4 hours ago, Jenki said:

the upshot is little saving.

£10/m3 add on to the concrete cost, so £1.50/m2 for 150mm slab. And of course reduced labour.

To the mesh cost add for laps and waste. 

 

Apologies for not noticing your earlier post.

I got a letter from Sika which didn't say a lot but was enough for our SE to file as 'risk gone, not our problem'.

[Jenki]

6 hours ago, saveasteading said:

£10/m3 add on to the concrete cost, so £1.50/m2 for 150mm slab. And of course reduced labour.

To the mesh cost add for laps and waste. 

 

Apologies for not noticing your earlier post.

I got a letter from Sika which didn't say a lot but was enough for our SE to file as 'risk gone, not our problem'.

 

My Pods are about 5 Cube, Slab and thickened edge foundation cast in one go (insulation on top to form a floating floor)

even at £10/kg (which I think is more realistically £20+) that's £40 / cube or £200 extra, plus the extra Cube for thickening the slab (£100) so minimum  £300 extra per slab.  mesh is around £280 per pod.

There is the labour side, but that's my time.

When I looked for costs for these fibres I was getting prices of £22 to £30 per KG.

 

so old school it is - this is typical UK construction resistance to change and adapt - costs money. - I was asking a few builders merchants if they can supply large qty's of EPS 300 and EPS70 for my DIY insulated foundation and the response - its too cold up here so we don't use Jablite.  

 

 

[Russell griffiths]

For your eps you want to go direct to the manufacturer. 
avoid the merchant for most things. 
manufacturer delivered a half attic load to me no problem. 
saved a fortune on pir prices. 

[saveasteading]

On 10/06/2022 at 06:33, Jenki said:

that's £40 / cube

And I'm getting quotes in Inverness at £10/m3. There are 3 types of fibre. The cheapest one is hairlike, for crack control,  then there is plastic in a solid pin shape which adds strength, then there is steel , like tacks or staples, which is for runways. Sounds like your quote is the middle one.

[saveasteading]

On 10/06/2022 at 07:20, Russell griffiths said:

direct to the manufacturer

Any way of doing this with pir?

[Russell griffiths]

15 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Any way of doing this with pir?

No. They are so big they are not interested, however there are a couple of eps manufacturers that are willing to deal with smaller orders. 

I know a few people who have ordered all their eps for insulated raft directly. 

[saveasteading]

On 13/06/2022 at 07:50, Russell griffiths said:

eps manufacturers

Thanks, but eps is half the price and half as effective, so it doesn't work for us.

[dpmiller]

graphite EPS is no dearer than normal and substantially better-performing so don't rule it out...