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26th April to 2nd May 2004

After a couple of slowish weeks things picked upagain this week.

We finished off filling the external walls by the garage with concrete and then laid the landdrain behind them in 10mm stone, wrapped in geotextile and clean stone on top.

With the promise of steel arriving and needing to make space for a 60 ton crane ( we needed to reach too far to use a smaller one - another £120 extra of course) we tidied up the site, moving packs of blocks, piles of stone on so on.  It was quite surprising how much space was actually there.

A good job we did that as the steel arrived, closely followed by two lorry loads of concrete floor beams.  Fortunately there was space for all of them.

However the steel delivery was not all it could have been - the beams were not primed as requested and was 2 beams short (albeit that I only noticed the second beam missing at the end of the week) and we had no bolts or shims for the stanchions.  Bit of a muck up all round really but sorted out by a price reduction, 3 tins of primer and a couple of brushes - shame it rained and rained when we painted the beams but a tarp and some trestles made a good enough shelter!

Saturday and the crane arrived - the steel went up in a couple of hours - despite finding one set of holes was not big enough for the bolts specified - temporarily we used smaller bolts and will sort this out next week - after further discussions with the steel people.  As we had to pay for a minimum of 8 hours for the crane we then put up some of the concrete floor beams including the bridge to the front door.  This showed exactly how heavy the 225mm beams are rather than the more normal 155mm beams. Shame the spans were such that the larger ones were more appropriate.  It was useful to put some beams up as it highlighted a couple of pointers for how to do it - 2 lengths of wood cut to the right size to help position the ends of the beams and it also showed some areas that will need tweaking to fit - something much better done over a day or so rather than having to rush.

Next week loads to do including how to cut the floor beams where they need excess trimmed - especially when they are 2.5m in the air!