[misc_work] Operation Super Shed

[welshpug 1,622]

are you lobster pink to go with the heatstroke too?

[Henry Yorke 269 3 Cars]

It is probably cheaper than joining a gym though!

 

Where has all that rubble come from? Just the trenches you dug for the footings?

 

(That's not your cat either!)

[M@tt 77]

i got a cracking red neck!!

 

yep the soil is just from the trenches and also digging out the first section where the lift recess is. I still need another skip though once the concretes been poured as the section in front of it that's going to be block paved so needs digging down as well.

 

I'm planning on kidnapping all the neighbourhood cats and locking them in my shed before i pour the base as if one of them little f#ckers gets in it whilst it's setting i'll be fuming

[M@tt 77]

been a bit busy recently so progress has slowed but hopefully the base should be finished in the next week. I've just been putting together the last bit of shuttering.

 

 

 

 

[miamichris 9]

Getting out of the ground is the slowest bit Matt, your nearly there though. The shed will be up in no time!

[M@tt 77]

You're not wrong Chris!! It's taken pissing ages!!

 

Anyway i've opted to get some professionals in to do the pour and power float it. I've been quoted a couple hundred quid for labour which i think will be well worth it it to have a professional job done rather than risk me ballsing it up!

 

so tonight i finished the shuttering and cut and bound all the matabar sheets in place so we're good to go for the pour! just need to check when they can do it!

 

 

[M@tt 77]

well D-Day is Thursday!! so tonight i finished wacking in a few side supports for the shuttering

 

 

i've also covered the car lift recess shuttering in visqueensheeting so that the finished edges should be smooth

 

 

and to ensure that the cement doesn't creep under the recess shuttering i've mastic'd it to the concrete base and run a small bead of sealant round the bottom so hopefully that'll do the job.

 

 

well fingers crossed for Thursday!!

[M@tt 77]

Well it seems to be going quite well so far! despite the builder getting a parking ticket after i said he was fine to park on the pavement across the road from me!! whoops

 

Anyway I'm getting photo updates off the missus as i'm in work

 

Here's the progress so far

 

 

 

 

[jimistdt 1]

All the cats in the immediate area are currently being held against their will in a big box somewhere then I take it Matt?

[welshpug 1,622]

perfect day for it, overcast and not too warm, fingers crossed it doesn't do the unmentioned!

[M@tt 77]

well they seem to have done a pretty good job, it's not completely smooth round the very edges and i've been round with a trowel to tidy them up, but on the whole i'm pretty happy. The mix was a C35 fibre mix so should be nice and strong and the guy seemed adament that it wouldn't need any contraction/expansion joints cutting in it!?! which i'm not too sure about considereing everythign i've read on the internet although if it does crack he'll be coming back to fix it!

 

They apparently had finished by lunch and it was just 2 of them and they barrowed it straight from the mixer lorry as it was unable to get down past the gate section.

 

I'll give it till the weekend before i lay the other single course of bricks round the far edge and then i can start erecting the timber frame, whoop whoop!!

 

standing in the middle of it now does make it feel nice and spacious i can't wait for it to be finished!!

 

 

[M@tt 77]

well things aren't quite as rosy as they initially seemed

 

Today on removing the side shuttering i could see quite a few holes in the concrete along the shuttered edge which would indicate it hadn't been tamped down very well!

 

I then proceeded to remove the car lift recess shuttering and found the same! only this time there were also house bricks chucked into the mix!! I was obviously not happy so called up the useless prick of a builder and asked him to explain himself. All of which was pretty fruitless and he just gave me excuse after excuse of how the concrete had been delivered too lean and they had to work their arses off to get such a good finish! i said well your the expert surely if the mix wasn't right you reject it!

 

anyway i won't bore you all with the details but essentially i've asked him to come round and remedy it other wise i'll post up pictures of his handy work on the local Sheffield forum so that others can see the quality of his workman ship! He said he will if he gets time but tbh I'm not holding my breathe!

 

Alarm bells should have rung when he arrived in a van with no company logo on (always a sign that someones a dodgy f***er if they dont like to advertise who they are) and also he sent his wife round to collect payment the evening after it had been laid (before i'd had chance to remove the shuttering)

 

He kept saying that i got a quality job done for a very cheap price. (i wouldn't consider £300 cheap for 1/2 day for 2 men!). When he came to look at the job initially he said to them it was a small easy job as they do concreting all the time and made out that there would be 3 or 4 guys barrowing it in rather than just him and his sidekick!

 

Anyway I've progressed on with laying the other course of bricks and cutting and drilling the base plates for the walls

 

holes in the shuttered sides

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2010 by M@tt

[miamichris 9]

Alarm bells should have rung when he arrived in a van with no company logo on (always a sign that someones a dodgy f***er if they dont like to advertise who they are) and also he sent his wife round to collect payment the evening after it had been laid (before i'd had chance to remove the shuttering)

 

 

Totally disagree with that about the van not being signwritten, our vans aren't sign written and our work isn't dodgy at all!! Just never can do without the vans as we need them for jobs and we're always pretty busy so I suppose the boss doesn't think we need it done. We have labourers that do this sort of concreting, as well as joiners and painters so sometimes I've been known to muck in and do a bit of concreting!

 

I honestly don't think it looks too bad a job mate, as long as it isn't cracking and crumbling on you then I would just patch in those bits around the edges. It's hard to get all the air out of the concrete without starting to use a vibrating poker etc.

 

^^^ The only thing is, WTF is with the house bricks? Why they thought that was a good idea, I will never know!

[M@tt 77]

no worries, no offence meant,

 

its just in hindsight i thought no wonder he doesn't advertise himself if this is the state of his work

 

as you said the floor does feel solid its just his attention to detail that's f***ing appalling! Any suggestions as to the best mix to use to fix the walls?

[GilesW 41]

I'm not that surprised you got that finish as you didn't specify vibro, and that you have some mesh in there.

 

Hand tamping will never get a huge amount of air out and tamped down, but especially if they did it quickly (it's a looooong job hand tamping effectively - especially with mesh).

 

Also, rethe bricks:

Hopefully it's just the crap they had in the back of the van they chucked in just to not have to bin it somewhere.

If not.....it maybe that they were a bit short of concrete and had to fill the shortfall somehow. In which case I would be pretty worried as you won't know how much and of what they have chucked in there.

 

It'll probably be fine though. If you really are that concerned then now is the time to kango some out and investgate further, but that has big time and money implications. Think I'd just risk it and deal with it later if you need to.

[miamichris 9]

no worries, no offence meant,

 

its just in hindsight i thought no wonder he doesn't advertise himself if this is the state of his work

 

as you said the floor does feel solid its just his attention to detail that's f***ing appalling! Any suggestions as to the best mix to use to fix the walls?

 

Not sure myself, just a sand/cement plastering mix I suppose to tidy those bits up. I'll ask a labourer out of work on monday for you

 

I'm not that surprised you got that finish as you didn't specify vibro, and that you have some mesh in there.

 

Hand tamping will never get a huge amount of air out and tamped down, but especially if they did it quickly (it's a looooong job hand tamping effectively - especially with mesh).

 

Also, rethe bricks:

Hopefully it's just the crap they had in the back of the van they chucked in just to not have to bin it somewhere.

If not.....it maybe that they were a bit short of concrete and had to fill the shortfall somehow. In which case I would be pretty worried as you won't know how much and of what they have chucked in there.

 

It'll probably be fine though. If you really are that concerned then now is the time to kango some out and investgate further, but that has big time and money implications. Think I'd just risk it and deal with it later if you need to.

 

thats the first thing I thought of once I seen the bricks, they were short on concrete!

 

I agree with Giles mate, don't worry about it and just crack on and get the garage up, by all means tidy up around the edges if you want to but don't let it hold you back. You did all the preparation work right, so hopefully you won't have any issues with it cracking etc. I would say you'll probably be doing your own concreting next time

 

Just out of interest, did someone recommend the builder to you or did you just find him in the yellow pages Matt?

 

EDIT : Just looking through that last set of photos and this really is going to be a super shed once its done If I didn't live across the water i'd be round to give you a hand to throw the garage up, as it looks like an interesting wee job!

Edited June 27, 2010 by miamichris

[M@tt 77]

Cheers chaps, yeah i've decided onwards and upwards is best, tbh i can remedy the problem just as well as they will so i'll save myself the hassle of getting them back and just do it myself.

 

Chris i told the bloke when i calculated the volume required that i made it to be 4.6m3 but he said he thought they only do it in 4.5m3 or 5m3! i think he's talking s*ite as when i phoned various concrete suppliers for a price i asked for 4.6m3 and they all quoted me no probs.

 

with regards to how i found this twat face, i put a wanted advert on the internet forum www.sheffieldforum.co.uk which is very active asking for any recommendations for companies to do a concrete base. I was contacted by a woman(wife of the builder) saying we do it, have a look at our website, also i googled them (www.squirrelconstruction.co.uk) and there was a 5* review of them by someone that came up at the head of the google results. When i met him, he seemed genuine enough, talked the talk, mentioned he had all the right equipment (ie wasn't hiring it in, which implied he does this sort of work all the time) etc etc any way lesson learned and from now on i'll only ever use mates recommendations

 

I should also say i did get another quote from another company but he was adamant on using agilia concrete (for those not in th eknow (like myself until i ggogled it ) its a water like cocrete that sets rock hard but you need to have perfect visqueening and also due to the entrance to the shed it would have mean it needed to be pumped and the guy quoted me something like £1300 to do it. I did get a price for DIY but that was £600+vat for the concrete plus i would have needed a conveyor which was another £100 + vat hire. so it all got rather expensive rather quickly

 

i spent part of yesterday afternoon and today marking out the base plates which will fix to the single course of bricks. i drilled the necesssary holes and cut over 40 sections of threaded bar which will be cemented into the bricks, fed through the base plates and nutted down in place

 

 

On friday i also ordered the garage door which is going to be a remote operated electrical roller door! it all sounds good until it dawned on me today that i actually gave the bloke the wrong dimensions to i need to call him sharpish tomorrow morning to get that changed before he makes it in the wrong size!! oops

Edited June 27, 2010 by M@tt

[M@tt 77]

right well i've had an abusive call off the builders wife this evening (he was hiding in background, i even called her on it!) after leaving them terrible feedback on a website that they advertise on

http://www.freeindex.co.uk/profile(squirre...ltd)_155381.htm

she's asked why we've done it? etc etc and "dave" was going to call you back, he's been away etc etc. I think 4 days is more than enough tie to make a courtesy call to an unhappy customer hence why i left it.

 

Anyway she's threatened to send round a building inspector to look at the work and if he says its up to standard she's going to sue me

 

anyway bit of advice required off the professional builders does what he's done live up to building regulations? ie have i got anything to be woried about? i'm pretty sure it doesn't. but the missus is now worried some dodgy builder knows where we live!

[luggy 13]

Hi Matt

Good effort on the garage so far

Have a look at this site might be of some help

 

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/england/public/tools/house/

Edited June 29, 2010 by luggy

[M@tt 77]

oh and during the call the woman kept asking for my surname i said "why would you need my surname?" i said "you tell me why you need my surname and i'll decided if i need to give it to you" anyway she's said "well we've got your address" to which i took that as a bit of a threat so phoned the cops to report it.

 

They've then contacted her straight away this evening on her mobile and warned her not to contact me as i took her surname questioning and address stating as threatening and not to contact me further otherwise it would be deemed harrasment and she'd be liable for arrest The cop also told them that this incident had been noted and should anything happen to my property they would be round to see them sharpish!

 

the cop told her if she wanted to sue me she should contat a solicitor! go on the cops!!!

[miamichris 9]

First of all..."Unfortunatley another case of cowboy builders!" hahaha!!! the feedback you gave them was great Matt!

 

Second, she's talking bollocks! As if she's going to sue you over feedback on a forum, wise up Mrs. Dave What sort of a guy gets his wife to ring up customers for him anyway!??

 

All the guy had to do was come round and fix the bits you weren't happy with and you wouldn't have had to leave the bad feedback, and that was it sorted so its his own fault. It wouldn't have taken long to finish off so fair play to you for sticking to your guns mate, you're just right

 

Couldn't tell you if it lives up to building regs mate, all he did was lay the concrete, you did all the hard preparation work. In my opinion though, once a building inspector seen those bricks chucked into the concrete mix, he wouldn't be very pleased! Why not ask the inspector to come and look at it for you and see what he thinks? It should be free I think.

 

As I said before, its not the worst job in the world, but all he had to do was finish it to your standards for you to be happy, which is the least he could do. I finish a job to my own standards which are usually a lot higher than the customers so I'd be a bit embarassed about this situation if I was him. I reckon he'll want to sort this out with you so you take down the feedback, once he cools off from reading it

[GilesW 41]

Throw in the phrase "best practice".

 

It's a great one to use as basically it is saying you may not have broken any regulations, but it is not the accepted method of doing it.

 

The importance of that statement is that it is the way the courts tend to look at things in the building industry if something fails.

You then have to justify whey you didn't follow best practice (as after all it is the accepted 'right way' of doing it) - and that is very often a very difficult thing to be able to justify to a judge, hence people always try and adopt best practice, or have robust reasoning to go against it.

 

I can promise you they will find no structural engineer who would say that is the 'right' way to do it (albeit they may say that it 'should be' fine).

 

 

It sounds like to me Dave knew he was being a cowboy. The misses has seen the site and gone off on someone calling her hard working hubby a cowboy, and Dave was getting all embarressed in the background and probably suggesting she 'just leave it love'.

 

Unfortunately in the building game reputation is key. So he should have placed a bit more importance on protecting it before acting all John Wayne.

[davepug205 7]

I dont think there are any regulations regarding a concrete area for that purpose, there just trying to scare you!

 

And to be honest youve got a stronger case than them, if you decide to claim your money back for what looks like a sh*t job.

 

It will be a solid base, they have used rubble (waste) to save on the cubic concrete. theyve just been very rough on the finnishing, which in my opinion is just as important.

 

For what its worth you need to just take it on the chin, as they can rip it up if you claim money back.

 

Remember ring me next time

[M@tt 77]

right well ive been plodding on slowly but surely, hopefully it should all come together fairly quickly from now on

 

i spent the weekend finishing some of the brick work and the anchors to tie the stud walls to the brickwork. Initially i had just cemented them in but as soon as i tightened the nuts up the studs would just twist in the mortar and pull out, so i got some 2 part epoxy resin called anchorset which went rock solid and held the studs really securely.

 

Once the anchor studs were secure i could bolt down the wall plates and make a start on the rest of the framework.

 

I started with the garage door frame and a roof truss template

 

 

 

and thats we're i'm up to at the moment. Weather permitting i'll have a crack at it every evening this week

[M@tt 77]

right well i managed to make some real progress today. I packed the missus and child off to london on the train for the day at 7.22am and they weren't due back till 10.30pm so i had the full day on building. woo hoo!!

 

I've got i'd say 90% of the wall frames done, there are just a few uprights that need finishing and also a couple more window header and footer cross members need screwing into place as well as some noggins between the uprights for power sockets etc to screw to.