• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Mike's ext'n & renovation (solar panels)

Tusses":2zhl5ayb said:
hmmm .. the form for the top bit will be tricky !
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As luck has it, a client of mine makes these urns and so on, so I won't have to.

9fingers":2zhl5ayb said:
Mike will be turning those on his lathe I expect!

:lol: :lol:

Bob
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Settle down Bob. :lol:
 
My back is a little better, so I've taken some tentative steps back to working on the house.

You may recall that last time I was making pier caps:

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Unfortunately, that was rather a wasted effort:

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Everything rounded over, and bits of cling film stuck in the surface. The cling film was the problem. So, I had another go, and this time just used wax as a mould release agent:

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Much better, albeit with a much less polished surface. At least the details are crisp. So, time for another mould, for the other half of the cap build-up:

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Again, pretty good, but not perfect:

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They're just sitting there dry, so need bedding on some mortar, which I'll do next time I have that colour mortar on the go.

You may also recall that I had dug out for a path to the workshop. Well, I spread some hardcore (note the depth gauge arrangement):

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Next, I poured some concrete:

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For a number of days now I have been rumbling bricks. I have a pack of Flettons (London brick Company stock brick), which are really very hard, and really very ugly. However, 20 minutes or so in the concrete mixer rather transforms them, with the original brick being on the right, and the rumbled brick being on the left:

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OK, so the process has rather transformed my mixer, too, breaking one of the blades off in the drum (but giving the barrel a really good clean out!). A bit of welding will happen in due course.

I planned to use the same principle of a guide across two pieces of wood to get the levels right, but thought I might add a little variation by building in a slight camber. You don't really want water pooling on a path, so I made this template, which allows for about a 7.5mm rise to the middle (that's just shy of 3/8ths for our American friends):

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Now, you might remember my frustration at not having an arc that worked for laying out this path, so this brickwork curve had to be by eye. I decided to just lay the centre course to start with:

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You can see the height guide jig lying next to my rubber mallet. Here's a close up:

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I have ummed and ahhed about this path a bit. At one stage it was going to be 4 bricks wide, and I toyed with 6 momentarily. However, I've settled on 5.

I had a visit from the electrician, and he fitted 4 of these in thea round patio retaining wall (with a view of the junction box behind the wall). The junction box has water-tight glands, and is filled with a non-setting gel. The lights are rated IP65, which means they should be watertight:

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That's a lovely path Mike, still not done mine, wish I had the confidence to do a brick one. I've been considering a composite deck (you're cringing, I can tell :D), but it's pricy. Seems mad as I have a whole stack of driveway/ precinct style bricks salvaged from the studio groundworks. I digress...

Love the rumbled brick look, easy on the eye...though I do feel sorry for your poor mixer... It must be exhausted.

Will you adjust the length of the bricks either side of the middle curve? Or perhaps spacing as they go out of sync? Or will you just let them do their thing?



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Thanks Jim.

I was going to just let them do their thing, but if it starts getting ugly I'll just find a shorter brick on the inner side, or stretch out the joints a bit on the outer.

This is skill free stuff. I've got a solid base, and all you have to do is get the bricks level, which is easy with the jig I use, and a straight edge. The mortar isn't on show at the moment (I'll be pointing separately), so all you have to do is spread a bed of mortar and tap the brick down into it. The mortar doesn't need to be fancy. Honestly, it couldn't be easier.
 
If it's any sort of thickness I just tamp hardcore a bit with the end of a sledge hammer. Here it was only an inch or maybe 2 thick, so just walking over it was enough. I use a sloppy cement which runs into all the crevices anyway, so it's not critical. My concrete will be 1 to 3 inches thick, I guess.

The other approach is to use hardcore then Type 1 (I think it's type 1, I get confused between my types), or road planings, and whack that down well. You can then lay pavings slabs or tiles direct to that. You can even bed the paving directly on sharp sand, again, whacked down hard, but I don't like this, as the edges are pretty certain to break off unless you have a formal concrete edging.
 
Quite a lot less cement than I thought.

For a slight ramp like I have, say 150-200mm over 2m, would you shutter the sides, and leave a gap at the sides so the cement pours down the sides, effectively encasing the core?

What would the correct detail be where the path meets the building plinth wall under a front door cill, should there be a little trough or gutter?

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Yeah that's sounds about right.

If the path slopes away from the building, then there is no need for a gutter/ drain at the threshold. If it slopes towards it, then an Acco-type channel is your answer. Just ask yourself what would happen if you turned a hose onto the area for an hour, and the answer will reveal itself. In any case, unless it is a level access threshold for wheelchair access, I would keep the path down just a bit from the threshold. Snow becomes an issue if it is level.
 
Type 1 is the top grade of sub base.

Footways/paths in gardens generally take very little loads so formation requirements are less onerous than driveways etc.

My garden sits on rock chalk and apart from frost heave requires very little "support" in fact the path to my garden shed is made from "Saxon" slabs sitting on the soil with the turf removed.
My patio is made of slabs and concrete paviors (Engineering bricks failed) and sits on a 75mm layer of dry sand and cement with dry fine sand brushed into the joints.

Rod
 
Looks great but I'm just wondering what frosts will do to that brick path. In the past I had small walls in the garden topped with ordinary Flettons and the frost took the surface off layer by layer. We have concrete paving edgers doing the job now.
 
Hmmmmm. Flettons are tested and certified for frost resistance, and so they should be absolutely fine. I don't think I've ever seen a spalled Fletton, so I'm puzzled about yours, Robert. I guess we'll find out with mine.
 
The edges were fine it was the large flat surface that came off in laminations. Just wondering if the frost rating excludes what is normally the underside?

Took a good few years before they looked bad so no immediate problem, if at all.
 
Tusses":3abngv2v said:
plus they are tumbled .. wouldn't that open up the "pores" ?
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Ordinarily, with a soft red, I'd say yes. But the reason I bought Flettons is that they are rock hard all the way through. It isn't like they have a crust with soft stuff below the surface.
 
Just a quick note to say that I am back working with oak, doing the major timbers around the junction between new and old parts of the house, and around the stairwell. It's complex, and fun, and I should post about it this evening if today goes well.

It's major stuff, with lots of upstairs floor and the stairs removed, and no direct access to our bedroom.
 
Just finished for the day. Too tired to post, so when I do get to it, there'll be lots and lots of photos. This is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, where you have to make the pieces yourself first, and where they have to be put together in a certain order. I've only had a couple of years to think about it though.....
 
Right, let's get the garden out of the way: there's oak work to be getting on with!

This shows the fillet of concrete supporting the outer edge of the brick path. I'll not have bricks breaking off the edge:

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There is a "dead" area on the sheltered north end of the house, which we plan to plant with pots and troughs (ferns, hostas, etc). This is how I prepared it:

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Next year I shall build a brick BBQ/ smoker/ pizza oven. I am not sure of the final design yet, but in the meantime, I needed to finish the retaining walls, so I went to the nearest brick dimension and laid out some blockwork for the base. You can also see that I laid blocks behind the brick retaining wall:

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Cleverly, I then failed to take a photo of the capping bricks in place. So, the wall is complete as far as the big steps. I must take a photo, because I also did the second pier cap. Anyway.........

Next step was backfilling behind the walls. This starts with some stone in the bottom, wrapped in geo-textile membrane so that it doesn't just fill up with mud. These stones assist drainage behind the wall. On top of that I place an upside-down turf, then some not-so-good soil, and finally some top quality soil:

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That carried on all the way around the walls as far as the main curved steps, and was then seeded, or planted with trailing plants (ivy and flea bane, for those who follow our gardening tips!! :) ).

I have a phone line under the path leading out to the workshop. Unfortunately, the armoured cable that I used was left over from another job, and wasn't long enough, so I made a sealed joint, and used some ordinary internal cable, protected by some cheap garden hose. Now, anyone who has tried to push a cable through 30 metres (100 feet) of conduit will attest, it's a thankless and frustrating task. So, I just slit the hose along its length and pushed the cable in:

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Finally, just some pure gardening. We want an area of flowering lawn, planted with wildflowers. Unfortunately, our soil is way too rich for that to work, so I hired a turf cutter and stripped a couple of hundred square metres a couple of inches deep, then ran a rotavator over it and covered the soil with sharp sand. This will then get forked in and levelled, ready for seeding in late August:

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It has generated lots of gorgeous topsoil for use around the garden next year, once the turf has rotted off:

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And that, folks, is the end of the external works for the time being. Now, it's woodwork time!!! :)
 
Nice work though I'm not too sure about ivy. My neighbour planted some 40yrs ago when everything was new, it's spread everywhere and to all nearby gardens and is a real pain to keep in check. I know it's good for the birds and bees but I hate the stuff and it's very difficult to remove.

Rod
 
Mike,

I really do like that workshop path, you may have forced me into a rethink on our garden paths. Will you be pointing up between the bricks? I'll check in with you in 12 months to see how the bricks are holding up.

Jon
 
TrimTheKing":nm304xek said:
Those rumbled bricks are very bright Mike, will they tone down over time to match the walls?

Cheers
Mark
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As Bob says, they'll soon be mellow and mossy, and trying to assimilate themselves into the lawn.
 
The next few days of work are all about creating a new structure for the first floor at the junction of the old and new parts of the house, and creating a stairwell in the process. When I went back to the pile of timbers which have been sitting in my dining room/ workshop for 6 months, I found that I was further through the work than I thought. There were just a few joints to make, and a few pieces to cut to length. Only a couple of bits needed making from scratch. That's a good start!

Here is the beam which will support the old bridging joist, and here is my first stab at the joint:

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And here is what a few minutes thought produced. You see, this joint isn't just about strength, but also about how the beam is offered up, and as it has complex tenons on the end, it needs to be slid straight into position, which mean this joint, coming in from the side, needs to be over-long:

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Here is a double mortise and tenon, where two beams meet:

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It is worth remembering that all of these joints are being made in timbers which are far too big to ever "offer-up-and-adjust". In other words, all of them are one-hit joints: the only time you see if they fit properly is when you actually fit them for the final time. So, accuracy is rather important.

Here is a dull tenon, just to show the process. This is cut in 5" square green oak (I say green, but it has been seasoning, inadvertently, for 6 months). Shoulders first, then I chisel off the cheeks, sneaking up to the lines to gauge the grain. Unless it is horribly gnarly stuff, perhaps with a knot, chiselling the tenons is always quicker than sawing them:

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That beam has a chamfer, so it also has a chamfer stop:

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Right, time for a little demolition. Here is the landing floor from the underside, in the lounge:

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From virtually the same spot, but one storey up. The handrail in the foreground is around the first stair location (if you remember, when the two parts of the house were separated the stair rose out of the lounge) :

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This is the top of the stair from the main bedroom doorway:

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And from the old part of the house. Remember this view:

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I took the landing chipboard flooring up:

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This shows the flooring partly removed, and the oak boards of the old floor trimmed to suit the new stairwell. Note the end of the bridging joist sticking out into space:

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With the flooring out of the way, it was time to get the temporary stair down. Somewhere along the line i had removed the plasterboard from the side of the downstairs loo, too:

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Same view as before, through where the old landing had been, down into the hall and lounge below. Note the old black beam in the centre of the photo:

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It was awkward getting it out, but a friend happened to be around and lent a hand for 5 minutes:

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So, now the way is almost clear for the new structure. We don't normally have a pile of clothes in the lounge, but we weren't absolutely sure that there would be access to our bedroom, so we were geared up for sleeping downstairs.

The first element of new structure were the pair of posts either side of the opening, sitting on the now sole plate, and extending up to sit under the wall plate and the steel you may remember I inserted due to an inconveniently located scarf joint right slap bang in the middle of the span. This was definitely a 2 man job, and I had a friend on standby to help with both, when I was ready. Here is where the first of the new posts is going:

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I'm afraid that when you are faced with lifting such a big piece of timber, it just isn't safe to stop and take photos. So, hey presto, here is the post in place:

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The critical joint, luckily, ended up exactly where it should have done:

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The fun thing with this post is that once it was correctly positioned I measured for another critical piece of the structure, and once that was made the post had to swing back out of the way to allow the tenons into the mortises. You'll note the lack of access: I was standing on top of the dining room oak plate for most of the post-adjusting process.

This all happened 2 days ago. There are lots and lots more photos in this little phase of work, but that's enough for now.
 
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