A delayed update.

It would seem I've neglected my blog, but then I'm not really sure anyone reads it anyway, so my time has been better spent building the garage rather than writing about it.
Anyway, in July, we got the timber wall plate on the internal blocks and lintels over the door openings. And brought the bricks up on the outside to give more strength to the walls to hold the roof up.

Then mid July my Dad, brother and me got all the trusses on and braced in a day.

  

  

Then after filling in the internal gable ends with the blocks, my Dad and brother came back for a couple days to help get the felt, battens and tiles on.

August i brought the brickwork up on the two gable ends

October I made the steel doors ready to clad in Oak, and fitted the small door.

End of October the Oak cladding arrived and the doors are nearly finished.

Thats all for now, i'll update when the garage is finished. The house will be started very soon as i'd like to get out the ground before the winter sets in and creates puddles everywhere!

Garage roof trusses arrive

Well things have slowed down for a bit, due to what was ment to be a big delay on roof trusses and work building up. But a week after ordering the trusses i had a phone call to say they will be delivered the following day!! Having already booked in some work, i had to get that done, but all being well i will be building again next week.

The garage has walls.

Its been a couple of weeks since the floor went down, and the now the walls have been going up.
I set a layer of engineering bricks round the inside skin to create a cavity tray type DPC (damp proof course), then put the first layer on the outside on top of the DPC with weep holes.

Then spent two days laying the first course of blocks on a bed of cement being very precise in getting them spot on level in all ways. That took a long time i hear you think? but its crucial to get this first layer spot on for the thin joint system to work properly.

As a result, almost entire inside skin went up in two days, just a course and a half to go, which by timings will take 2.5 hours :) Thin joint system is QUICK.

We then spent last Friday laying some bricks for a change. I think the choice of brick and cement colour are perfect.

Next update will be more brick laying i would think. Lintels are on order, and we are awaiting roof truss prices, yes i am behind on ordering those, but hadn't realised the thin joint to be quite this quick.

The garage has a floor.

We picked the windiest day to lay the concrete! recorded 42mph winds, any faster and we'd have had waves in the concrete :)
Me and Dad made a concrete shoot up to make life easier, I'd seen a video on Youtube of someone in India doing the same,

But it didn't work for us!

And ended up having it squirted as far as the lorry could get it and using rakes to drag it around.

After a lot of very back braking work we used a length of wood to scrape over the top and get level, then used a home made bull float to get a smooth finish.

And finally just tweaking a small bit that wouldn't smooth out, before going round the edges.

Now just have to wait for the concrete to set. I'm going to level the ground out with the digger behind the garage now i can get it over there (once it's hardened), before i build any walls up, with any luck thats next weeks job, then start laying bricks as well :)

The garage is under way.

Wow it's been a while since i've updated you, but a lot has been happening!
We have had a lot of these:

And the ground dried out enough for me to lay the first of many trench blocks:

My stand alone mixing kit has been very useful as theres obviously no power up there and an electric mixer is more useful for my job. These garden tractors are so useful for transporting things around in the trailers.

My Dad (in next two pics) has been awesome with helping me out move things on quickly, Thanks Dad!

And the inspector gives her approval :)

The the trench blocks went round, then a layer of engineering bricks for the inner and outer skin brought the walls up to floor level. Then filled the hardcore base in. And got some road planings in for the drive so the concrete lorries can get in without getting stuck.

A finer grade of sub base to level off and fill in the holes, compacted down, and finished with a sand blinding.

Me then giving a final wacker plate

My Dad and Brother came over to help put the damp proof membrane down.

We had to use a B475 reinforced mesh.

And then just wait for the concrete to arrive :)

Things have started to move quickly at last! :)

Next update in a couple days.

I finally converted the pallet forks to fit our digger:)

Today was spent finishing making the brackets for my pallet forks to fit the front of our digger. They originally came from a normal forklift so not a straight forward fit. We can now move pallets of bricks and bulk bags of sand around:) Only taken me nearly three years to do it! I did have them ratchet strapped to the front bucket but couldn't see what i was picking up (and the strap stretched a bit).

bricks are ordered

Its been a while since my last update, the weather has not helped, and work is busy. But we have ordered the blocks for the inner part of the garage, and the bricks for the house and garage. Seems there is a national shortage of bricks, and the brick companies are putting all efforts in to making standard bricks, so our specialist type brick has taken a back seat with a six month lead time! Luckily Travis Perkins have almost enough of what we need in stock at one of their branches so we have dibs on those, just awaiting a delivery time of 17,000 bricks:) The Celcon blocks are also in demand so been on order for a few weeks and await delivery of those aswell. As the weather is VERY wet at the moment the field is like a swamp, just the same as any large flat area of grass field, so not much can be done anyway without making a huge mess. With any luck i can start work on building the base of the garage up in the next couple weeks, then ill have a solid platform to build the walls up from.