Keep doing that Vince as we all need pulling into line when laziness rears its head.
Oh and how's your garage coming along ?
It's coming along....
Got the steel reinforcements delivered, as well as a palette of concrete blocks I need to raise the foundations to where I need them to be.
Ordered a concrete mixer truck, poured the concrete, all 7m3 of it. Paid a bit extra to get the 13m long telescopic belt conveyor option. Makes life so much easier. Guy has a radio remote control with a joystick and can easily and accurately steer the concrete all along the trenches. Also paid a little extra and ordered the "super fluid" concrete formula (extra dose of thinner additive and fine gravel rather than coarse), as the EU norm allows. Was like soup. Along with the conveyor, made the job a breeze and the few friends I had hired for the day to spread the concrete with rakes, did not have much if anything at all to do. Soup spread nicely all by itself.
Then went to measure the hypotenuse of the garage so I can mark accurately the location of the corner of the garage, so I can get the overall geometry right. 5,80m wide by 10,7m long, hypotenuse is 12,17m long. Problem : the palette of blocks was right in the line of sight of the hypotenuse so could not measure it !
So had to empty the palette to be able to make the measurement. I opted to kill two birds with one stone, I took that opportunity to pre-position the blocks on the foundation, roughly were they would go. Then could measure the hypotenuse at last... my neighbour had just bought a few days before, one of these fancy laser thingies, a nice Bosh Pro/blue device he got used for only 5 Euros ! A grand-ma was selling for cheap the stuff from his recently deceased husband.. good deals to be had apparently !
Never used these laser thingies before so I didn't trust them at first. So given that this measurement was critical, no mistake was allowed, so I double checked with my double decameter tape measure. The two measurements were spot on in agreement, I felt relieved... these little laser gizmos are reliable then... good, because it's a million times more convenient and faster to use than a decameter, when working alone as I am.
Decameter still useful though, for other tasks.
Once I had located the corner of the garage, I could put strings to materialize the edge of the slab/garage, so I can easily position/lineup the blocks.
I am addicted to those laser gizmos now, so might get a laser level to help me get the rows of blocks level, as not easy to do given the length of the garage. Almost 11m, cumulative errors quickly ruin your day. A friend is soon to buy a rotating laser as well, so I am covered...
Yesterday a friend brought me some sand in his little trailer (don't have one nor a tow hitch), nice of him. Later this week he will also bring his electric cement mixer and a rubber bucket to get the cement/sand proportion right easily.. So I will have everything I need to get cracking. I will watch the weather forecast closely and look for 2 consecutive days of guaranteed sun shine, which is pretty rare at the moment.. usually overcast with intermittent showers... it's now a race to get these blocks in place before the winter settles and temperatures become too low to do cement. So will lay the blocks in the coming days normally... as soon as weather permits.
Warning : it's obvious but the above is for information only. Any construction experts and know it all are not welcome. Refrain from lecturing me. You will either be ignored or told to fuck off, depending on the mood. You've been warned. 
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