Kerbing our driveway

Our garage door is in the gable-end wall that directly faces our shared track, as it runs in a straight line from the north. At the last minute the track curves away into our immediate neighbours property. We need to build a short driveway  to run from the track down to the garage door. In the fullness of time we also need to provide several parking spaces and room for fire trucks to turn, so the driveway area will be much bigger that we need simply to get to the garage. We have laid a linear drain across the front of the steading to catch surface water running off the driveway, but we also want to stop it running off the track onto the driveway.

So we need to install kerbing that roughly follows the boundary of the track. It is to run from the north-west corner of our property , right down to the north-west corner of the steading itself – some 20m in total. We bought standard height concrete stones for each end and low stones for the rest, with a single left-hand and a single right-hand drop stone between.

Ric used the digger to excavate a foundation trench over most of the length, temporarily leaving a short section for us to drive over. Unsurprisingly, the ground was very heavy going, having compacted down over the last century or two. We generally followed the boundary, with a shallow diversion, or kink, onto our driveway so that we can get over the kerb more cleanly when heading down to the garage area – otherwise we would run wheels along the kerbing for quite a length rather than over it.

We cranked up the mixer and spent several half-days producing medium-strength concrete that we barrowed over and dropped in the trench, to a level 100mm below the finished surface. We even got rid of small pieces of our surplus rebar mesh. Once the concrete had gone off enough, we mixed sand-cement mortar and bedded the kerbstones onto the foundation. The following day we mixed more concrete and haunched it up against both sides of the kerbstones. Once the ends had gone-off enough to support the weight of the car, he excavated the middle section and we built that up.

We had been very concerned that we would run out of cement and blockmix before we finished. As it happened, we finished the cement and had only a barrow-load or so of blockmix left over If we have not done a good job, we will find out the hard way when the next lorry runs over it! Meanwhile, we know that water falling on the track can no longer run down onto our driveway.

What Ric did

The field drain: Ric pressed on with sorting out our flooded driveway area. He discovered where the field drain we found last year, at  the bottom of our south-west corner foundations, runs once it clears the building. Having scraped away the soft topsoil, he could see a clear run of softer ground. It runs parallel to the west wall of the steading and appears just about where we had put our mail drop box. It carries on in a straight line under the shared track and into our neighbour’s field. We had already agreed with the architect that we would divert it into our drains. Given the levels, we would need to break into the drain on the neighbour’s side, to get enough height to run it into our rather higher-level surface water drain. We will need to dig across the shared track. I got the blessing of Mr Aitken to do this, at a date to be agreed.

Cause of flooding driveway identified?: We decided to run a french drain across our flooded area, towards the corner of our plot to where we had previously seen standing water. Whilst digging the drain, Ric discovered what we hope was the cause of the whole mess.

It seems that in 2015, when the contractor ran our water supply across the shared track and up to our steading wall, they cut across some near-surface field drains running west-east. The damaged drains blocked when that trench was filled,  had ponded up water and has been seeping water ever since into our driveway. Indirectly, this would also explain why, when we bought the property, we though we heard running water round about the wall of the steading that will have our garage door in it, but have not heard it for the last year or so. We never worked out why water was running, but we noticed when it stopped.

We also found out that the contractor had dumped turf and soft soil at the bottom of the trench. Ric sorted that out.

He included a length of slotted drain pipe in the French drain and connected it into the surface water drain. He left the far end of the drain trench open, in case we want to extend it further. It initially had standing water in the bottom, but dried up after a couple of days – hopeful sign.

Fixing our driveway off the track: Our 20 tonnes of MOT Type 1 (sub-base in the vernacular) arrived, Ric got it laid and rollered and we have a good driveway on and off the track. There is no soft ground so far and plenty of room for most trucks to be able to back in and drive out forwards. We can do something about it in a year or two to run right up to our garage door and provide our additional parking spaces.

The sub base is to allow trucks on and off site. If teh levels are right we can extend it forwards to teh steading when we have the garage floor and drainage in place.

Wall problems: In sorting out our driveway, Ric had cleared away surface soil right up to the steading wall. He looked more closely and made a disturbing discovery. The north-west gable-end wall that overlooks the area has a large concrete trough against it which we needs to remove. At some time in the past, the entire wall foundation to the left of the trough had been dug out – there was nothing holding it up. The perpetrator had installed some sort of brick construction in the space, with short lengths of field drain running into it. We think that latter are the remains of the field drains damaged by the contractor who installed our water supply. We also think this was where we heard the sound of running water when we bought the property, although it was overgrown at the time.

Anyway, we did not even want to remove the concrete trough until we had decided how to make the wall safe. Ric got the architect in. The options were to very delicately underpin the wall in several operations, or to cut our losses and pull the wall down. The advantage of pulling down is that we can build the garage door into the new build rather than having to prop the wall and pull out the stonework. Caution won out, we will demolish most of the wall, put a foundation in and re-build. A bit of a blow, though.

The ground has been dug away underneath the wall.

Preparing for a concrete crusher: George claimed sometime last year that he knew someone with a portable crusher and that he would see if they will break our pile of concrete into hardcore. Given we are talking about laying the floor slab later this year, we nagged him until he did something about it. Ric cleared enough space to dump large amounts of crushed concrete.

A hidden surprise: Ric finished our driveway and headed round the back of the site to look at the surface water soakaway. He traced the line the drain would follow from where he left it last year. There was a concrete shed base in the way, so he got the breaker out and planned to break it up enough to use the digger on it. Except that it was not a shed base, but the reinforced concrete roof to a ginormous buried water tank, some 2m x 3m and over 2m deep. It is half-full of water, with sludge at the bottom. It has clay pipes going in and out and is a bit of a mystery at the moment.

Ric suggested cleaning it out and using it as a supply of water for the garden. He created an opening just about big enough to get a person in and plans to run the surface water drain in and out.

Ric tried to break what he thought twas a floor slab.

Once he realised what it was, he broke out this entrance hole,so we could maintain it.

More drain work: He went round the surface water system he installed last September, dug out the spare sockets he had put in but buried and formed the connections for our gutter downpipes – one on the north side at the east end, one each end on the east side and one on the west-most wall at the south end. He topped-up the ground along the entire length of the trench where it had settled over the winter. He got the level out and planned the run down to the soakaway. He found a point that would work – the drain needs to enter at 300mm depth, but the soakaway needs to be shallow enough to be above the water table. He then dug out the soakaway – 4m x 4m x 1.3m deep (1m deep of rubble, 30cm of cover).

At this point Ric had to head south to sort out a couple of problems, due back after a fortnight, at which point we would also be on site.

A flying visit, Ric settles in

I flew up to Aberdeen in mid-March, to get Ric set up for his long stint. He will not have a vehicle. I spent a long weekend setting him up to survive until we arrived mid-April. I got two 19kg bottles of propane, to keep the caravan warm, and two 20l jerry cans to stockpile diesel. Ric fitted the new water heater in the caravan.

He was looking around for a folding bike. We found someone in Ellon who had one he could try, we went round to look. Ric was quite taken with the idea and looked on Ebay.

I mis-booked my flight home and had to wait an extra day, I put it to good use. We got our parcel drop-box fixed to the wall and contacted the post office to let them know – they got our regular postie to check it out, they were happy. I fixed a couple of long lengths of windbreak netting back to the fence. They were undone along the bottom and seemed to have unravelled rather than worn through.

We got plenty of supplies in for Ric and I left him to it.

The drop box is big enough for several small parcels.

Our new water heater, installed & ready!

Floor levels, room heights & roof trusses: I wanted to get floor levels marked accurately and, from that, solve the mystery of how much ceiling space we would have. I bought two cans of spray paint – orange & purple. We used the level to establish floor levels at one point near the main bedroom. We knew we intended the blockwork on the gable-end foundation to be at around finished floor level, it was really a case of deciding the exact height. We sprayed lines at slab level (orange) and final floor level (purple, 15cm above slab). We used the level to find the same height at every opening and sprayed our orange & purple marks. Most of the sections of blockwork correctly have the tops at finished floor level, the blockwork will have a damp proof course that drops down to meet with the damp proof membrane under the floor slab. It will also overlap with the tanking we need to put over the edges of the floor slab and up the inside of the wall.

It was easy to measure the height to the old joists in the west section of the steading. This is the same height we need to have the new joists because there is one window which will be close to the downstairs ceiling.This gives us a comfortable 2.2m room height. From there I measured to the wall heads and added 40cm for the blockwork that will raise the trusses. With a 42 degree roof slope and knowing the widths of the east and west sections of the steading, we calculated total height. The upstairs should be able to have a 2.2m ceiling over a large chunk of the width, with the lie-in (coombing) starting about 1.2m above floor level. The old joists were 200mm deep, so this pretty much decided me on roof trusses and floor joists. We will go with the current plans for raised-tie trusses and separate 200mm easijoists. The alternative, attic trusses, cannot have less than 300mm joists, losing us 100mm of head space.

The caravan is getting encroached on by piles of spoil.

Thickening our floor slab: We spent some time pondering on the need to deepen our floor slab at the edges to 300mm at the edges of the building, to support structural timberwork. We thought this would mean digging well under the foundations and it worried us. We decided that the deepening was only needed where the timberwork was carrying load i.e. floor joists in the west and east sections of the steading, along the long walls. We could take away from that all the pieces of internal and external foundations we had already laid, because we had already built them up to support the slab directly. We can take away the gallery area in the east section. So we are left with no more than 20m deepening in total.

Even better, the architect, when quizzed, was happy that we create the deepening by not running hardcore to the wall edge. So no dodgy digging under foundation depth at all.

More flooding on our future driveway: We noted that the area round our drop-off from our track was flooded and that the remaining soft ground was clearly not going to allow trucks on and off, despite the 6 tonnes of 40mm gravel we had laid last year. We were a bit puzzled why things were getting worse, but planned to dig out all the soft ground, build up a much bigger solid base and run a French drain across the soft area from our surface water drain.

We ordered 20 tonnes of MOT Type 3 sub base and 10 tonnes of 10mm pea gravel. We arranged for the mini digger and mini dumper to be dropped off.

Once the digger arrived, Ric dug out the soft ground. He cleared right up to the steading wall, where our garage door will be. The seeping of water into the area turned into a definite spring of water. More on this shortly…

Standing water on the concrete hardstanding.

Which got worse.

Ric cleared away teh softw ground to incestigate.

And took the opportunity to clear right back to teh steading gable-end.