Garage Floor

With the main floor on, we proceeded to prepare the garage foundation. A series of piles (pillars underground) were dug and poured along with floor drains. This was followed by the original ground level being built up with gravel. For levelling we used a 955 John Deere yard tractor with a front-end loader. Forms were put up, rebar laid and some poly (plasic) put down where the floor would meet up with the joists of the house. Notice how the garage floor is the same height as the house floor. This is for wheelchair accessability.

For this job we hired some local concrete contractors to help with pouring and trawling. We normally pour and trawl ourselves but we were curious how the professionals would do it. We also did not have more than a good idea of how to trawl for the drains. They did a pretty good job.

Not a whole lot of lessons were learned on this stage. Though we did learn a new tecnique of levelling concrete. We used to set up a series of levelling posts and pipes, over which we would level the concrete. The contractor demonstrated a way of levelling without pipes which we have since tried in various situations and works reasonably. Later on, when we poured the driveway, we still used pipes because there we wanted to be sure of maintaining a proper grade.