Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Mar 16, 2010 6:42 pm We booked a concreter for tomorrow and Thursday to do our driveway and front path. When we went over the plans in detail today, I asked what level he proposes to have the concrete going to against the house, and he is intending to run it to the brick work level immediately below the weep holes and the flashing. Now, when our building inspector (Kevin) did our final inspection, he mentioned that the concrete for paths should be 75 mm or greater below the level of the flashing, hence a full brick work level below the weep holes or Henley could reneg on any warranty issues. The concreter, who seems to know what he is doing, pointed out that this is impossible at the garage entrance because of the level of the garage being at the level of the weep hole, and said that it is normal practice to pour the concrete to the top of the brick level under the weep hole. As well, our inspector had said that a foam expansion strip should be laid between the house slab and the concrete. Our concreter said that this is only needed in certain place, for example, at the corners of the building. Now I'm worried, and it is too late to expect a response from a call to the building inspector, although I have just called him in case. Can anyone let me know who is correct? Help, please! Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 2Mar 16, 2010 7:02 pm Fiffaro ....when our building inspector (Kevin) did our final inspection, he mentioned that the concrete for paths should be 75 mm or greater below the level of the flashing, hence a full brick work level below the weep holes or Henley could reneg on any warranty issues. The concreter, who seems to know what he is doing, pointed out that this is impossible at the garage entrance because of the level of the garage being at the level of the weep hole, and said that it is normal practice to pour the concrete to the top of the brick level under the weep hole. He's right: obviously the driveway needs to be level with the garage slab - other concrete, I can't really say, but you also need to consider step height for any that's adjacent to doorways. Too big a step is dangerous, so is too small a step (people tend to expect ground level to be lower and stumble walking out the door). I'm sure someone here knows the ins and outs. Fiffaro As well, our inspector had said that a foam expansion strip should be laid between the house slab and the concrete. Our concreter said that this is only needed in certain place, for example, at the corners of the building. We have expansion strips where the driveway and footpath meet, and where the driveway and garage slab meet. We also have one between the original house slab in the alfresco room and the new slab that was laid for our extended paving. The work was done by two separate businesses and they both used the foam. (In spite of this extra step, the footpath now sits at a slightly lower level than the driveway - the soil around here is rubbish. I'd be concerned that cracking might have occurred without the foam strip.) Don't take my word for any of this, I know squat about concreting. I'm just sharing our experience.... Re: Concrete - level against house 3Mar 16, 2010 7:10 pm Cant help with your particular problem, but just a word of caution about the concrete residue. We just had a slab poured for an extension, all was great except i discovered the concretors had washed their equipment, near the tap and right on top of my organic veggie patch. Needless to say i was very unimmpressed when i discovered the mess which had set rock hard full of aggregate rocks and concrete. Re: Concrete - level against house 4Mar 16, 2010 7:36 pm Thank you for letting me know how the concreting was done around your house, Kek. We also have very reactive soil, and that was mentioned by our independent inspector. Sounds like I will have to insist on that at least. That must have been disheartening, Mango. I doubt that any of the workers would have done that if they had worked to establish a garden themselves. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 5Mar 16, 2010 11:03 pm ... concrete for paths should be 75 mm or greater below the level of the flashing... That's what I was told too, 75mm below the bottom of weep holes. My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Concrete - level against house 6Mar 21, 2010 10:38 pm Thanks all. I persuaded the concreter to keep the concrete at the required level and to insert expansion foam between the slab and the concrete he was pouring (except, I noticed afterwards, for a brick's width of the pylons at the edges of the garage entry. I'll have to find out if this will be a problem and cut it back if necessary. The concreter kept telling me that he had never had to keep the 75 mm below the weep holes before or use expansion foam except around corners, and it was all unnecessary, but everyone I talked to and the advice on here was different from what he was saying. He also quoted for more concrete than he ordered, but would not reduce the charge by the amount that his quote was over - and he tried to charge me for more reinforcing than he used - he did back down on that when I pointed out that the quote was for more mesh than he had delivered. I'm sure that Paul's construction work is fine, but I'll be looking for someone who is less difficult to deal with when we get the rest of the concreting done. For the few extra hundred dollars that I feel I was rooked for, he will miss out on many thousand of dollars worth of further concreting. If that's to small for him to worry about, why did he put a flyer in my letter box saying that he did this level of work? Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 7Mar 21, 2010 10:46 pm I'd say if he is advertizing he is not flooded with work Would that say anything... if he is rorting you i would steer clear. Mesh and concrete are easy to calculate on a simple job, so you would have to be a N00b to try. Where you are coming from is where you are going to... Re: Concrete - level against house 8Mar 22, 2010 8:33 am Sorry to hear about this difficult experience, Fif It's excellent that you still managed to get the work done the way you wanted it. Can you post us some pics of the work? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Concrete - level against house 9Mar 22, 2010 9:50 am Lex Sorry to hear about this difficult experience, Fif It's excellent that you still managed to get the work done the way you wanted it. Can you post us some pics of the work? I'll take my camera today. Time for some more pics. Old ones at http://www.macfarlane.net.au/Gallery/Ad ... 20Gallery/ My web site will be down for part of the day (Tuesday 23rd) as we check if the ADSL really has been provisioned at our new house. Sorry. Frantically busy times! EDIT - Please don't try this link at the moment. Our web server hasn't been moved yet and our ISP has provided a dynamic IP address for the old house - I haven't the time to keep updating the DNS server to reflect the changes. By Maundy Thursday the web server will be in the new house and have a static IP address so the link should be working again. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 11Mar 23, 2010 9:20 am [quote="Lex"]Uhhhh, this link is not working /quote] Sorry, replaced spaces so clicking on the link should work - when the modem is in our old house! Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 12Mar 23, 2010 9:39 am Still doesn't work. I already tried that new link earlier, when the original one didn't work. Still nothing, even tried with underscores, and one level up too, and even the root domain Looks like the site is down ATM? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Concrete - level against house 13Mar 25, 2010 2:12 pm Sorry, Lex. I should have explained that we 'borrowed' our home modem and router to try ADSL access at our new house. Over the next few days, our Internet will be spasmodic as we shuffle backwards and forwards. (We host our own web site, so when our Internet access is down, no-one sees our web site.) As of Monday, we should be up full time again. We have ADSL. Only a few days ago, it looked like that was not going to be the case. Yesterday, we were told it would be at least a week before we found out if we could. Today, we have it Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 14Mar 25, 2010 10:51 pm Sorry to those who tried to look at the photo gallery. Silly me forgot that moving to a new ADSL plan - as Telstra's policy means that we will not have access to ADSL2+ in a more recent development than we have been living, also means that I have to update the record that converts 'macfarlane.net.au' to our IP address that has to change with the change back to ADSL. Of course it worked when I tried it because it connected via our home network without having to look up our domain name. Too much to do, too many late nights, mistakes are starting to creep in - but our garage floor looks great!!! This time next week, we will be in our new house and free of renting. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 15Mar 26, 2010 6:33 am Hey Fiff, don't be too hard on yourself, that's nothing to worry about!! We'll just wait ... and wait for the pics of your bamboo flooring too and we want lots of them Cheers My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Concrete - level against house 16Mar 27, 2010 10:15 am Lex Hey Fiff, don't be too hard on yourself, that's nothing to worry about!! We'll just wait ... and wait for the pics of your bamboo flooring too and we want lots of them Cheers Thanks, Lex. I'm hoping to take some when I get home today. The weekend of the move and I have two weddings and two graduation ceremonies to play for. At least I am able to use my brand new wireless broadband to do some work whilst the graduands are receiving their degrees. Oh, and to check my favourite forum! I could use the time to catch up on my sleep, but I might snore and give myself away. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Concrete - level against house 17Apr 09, 2010 9:34 am We want to install a concrete outdoor area after handover. We want to have it at the very close to the same level of the internal floors. The reason is that we do not want to have a step down/up when going out/in. We are having stacking sliding doors that are being set flush with the slab. We are not sure if this can be done or not. Everything that we have heard and read says that there needs to be step down of about 7.5 cm. Is there anything we can do to get around this without causing problems? Re: Concrete - level against house 18Apr 09, 2010 12:25 pm Hi Homelessone, Do you have a pressing need for having the same levels? If not, a 75mm stepdown is barely noticable and, although I haven't investigated what's the reason behind it, I suppose it must be good in times of high rains and similar. I personally would not give up on the 75mm step-down, I think it's good (and it actually might be mandatory). My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Concrete - level against house 19Apr 09, 2010 2:16 pm Actually, I think it was more like 7.5cm below the damp proof course. So I'm not sure what the end reult would be, but it might endup more than 7.5cm Lex, a few cm won't be too much of an issue. However we want to avoid having a step to get in or out. The aim is to create a seamless transition between indoors and outdoors. 6 4346 DIY, Home Maintenance & Repair I'm in WA and our sandy soils make drainage a bit easier but this is what I'd be doing. Dig down to your footings and let the wall dry out. Clean it all well by brushing… 1 5193 isn't a garage level with the rest of the house a given? pretty sure they 'came around' long time ago. if you have a flat block, the garage is usually level with the rest… 1 17525 |