If you saw the film Locke you will realise that concrete is a serious business but what I am doing here is not giving you technical advice on concrete but the benefit of experience and stuff you won't read in books.
Work out very carefully where you are going to put it BEFORE the concrete truck arrives!
If you are going to lay concrete where it is important that it penetrates and bonds in with no air bubbles, you MUST rent a Vibrating Poker - not necessarily from Jewsons - that was the only web reference I could find!
1976 was the hottest Summer for decades - they even apponted a Minister of Drought and "experts" predicted that it would take 20 years for gardens to recover from the desert conditions. Of course, as soon as they appointed the Minister of Drought, the Heavens opened (maybe he did a rain dance?) and all the gardens were fine within a month maximum.
In the middle of this heatwave, I ordered 5 cubic metres of concrete to go in the footings of a dry stone wall planned to go right round my garden. I was working with a friend of mine and we both had a lot of experience of concrete.
But when the truck arrived, we suddenly realised that our vague plan of dropping it on the ground was hopelessly naive. There was no flat land you could shovel off.
What did we do? We opened the kitchen window and shot five cubic metres of concrete into the kitchen where it formed a pyramid almost to the ceiling. We then worked like slaves to move it before it went off. Three hours later we had shifted the whole damn lot but it was a very close run thing.
Don't do that
Bob Cory
Modified on 16/09/2019 at 07:32:40 by ℗ Bob Cory