Written by: Alex

Created: 20 December 2019

Hits: 1372

Now that the block and beam is in place and the drain established I can now turn my thoughts to the next layer of the floor. Typically block and beam is covered with another coating called screed. Screed is a very dry mixture of cement and sand mixed at a ratio of 1:4. I've done a lot of reading regarding screed and watched videos, but I am in no way an expert. From what I understand however the critical part of the process is getting the amount of added water correct. Too much water and the screed will be too weak, too little and the cement won't have enough water to form bonds and it's likely to crack. The ideal amount of liquid to add results in a mix that resembles breadcrumbs, with small balls forming on the surface whilst the mixer is turning. If I was laying a flat floor I'd be able to hire a company to pour a liquid version of screed over the whole floor. This would self-level and be nice and smooth and the whole job would be done in a day. Unfortunately, with my need for a sloped floor it's just me and my cement mixer!

So now I know how to get the right consistency it's time to figure out how to get the right shape. A common way to lay the floor is to lay out long pieces of wood ( or screeds - hence the name ) spaced about a metre apart. The screed mix is then applied and left a short while to harden. The screeds are then removed and a gap left before repeating the process. We then have blocks of screeded floor every other metre. Once the blocks have dried sufficiently you fill in the gaps. So I needed some nice straight pieces of wood to use for this process. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything at my local builders merchants that didn't look like a banana so in the end I decided to buy some mild steel box section. I chose a variant that had a thick enough wall that it wouldn't bend and other than maybe going a bit rusty my metal screeds wouldn't change shape when exposed to water repeatedly.

I spent a lot of time with a spirit level getting the first stripe at the correct height to meet the drain in the centre. The process of applying the screed mix was pretty straightforward. First clean the floor of all dust and muck - luckily there was no grease to remove. Next paint the dense concrete blocks with SBR ( rubber super pva glue additive ) to bond the screed mix to the blocks. Pour on the screed 'crumbs' until there was about 20mm thickness and then jump up and down on it until it's flat and compacted. Repeat until the whole area of the stripe block is filled and then use a flat edge to level everything up. As the metal screeds weren't the same height as the block I was creating I created 'ramps' down each side. These shapes actually allow the stripes to interlock and might help to keep the floor level if the subfloor ever moves. This method is known as 'bonded screed'. My brewery floor is 75 square metres, and with an average of 80mm screed thickness this has required around 6 cubic metres of screed, or the formation of just under 40 of these 'stripes'.

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Each stripe was covered with damp cloths to keep it moist and slowly cure for 48hrs. This gives the cement time to form chemical bonds. Each stripe may take up to 3 months to dry sufficiently well to allow me to apply the final waterproof layer of Epoxy or similar coating. Although not difficult in itself this part of the brewery construction has been quite frustrating. To mix screed you need dry sand. Sand that is too wet won't allow the correct mix consistency even when mixed with bone dry cement. I've found that full tonne bags of sand are able to control and distribute their moisture reasonably well, but once you've used half of the sand in the bag what's left can become too wet in bad weather. Sand also takes a surprisingly long time to dry. Placing a very large amount of weight on top helps to squeeze a lot of the water, as does combining two half empty bags into one full one. Unfortunately if it's a misty morning then all that moisture is going to soak into the sand straight through the bag.

As all of this has taken some time I started laying the foundations for the cold room at the same time I was working on casting my screed stripes. I'll be controlling the temperature of this part of the brewery so I need to lay some insulation down on the floor. My plan was to lay a double row of blocks, the first surrounding the insulation and the second creating a lip around the outside on which the walls will rest. Originally I planned to create a large cold room that spanned the entire width of the room but I've decided to divide the area into two. The first will act as a smaller cold room whilst the second area, although insulated will be used initially as a storage area. This has the benefits of reducing the running costs of keeping the room cold whilst the brewery is small and will allow me to expand at a future date. A central drain will run internally down the side of the cold room and connect to the existing drain I've already installed. I'm hoping it should be possible to remove some blocks at a future date and recast a small section of the floor to incorporate this drain into the expanded cold room. Once I'd laid out the perimeter and mortared everything I lined the area first with a damp-proof membrane to stop any moisture from rising and soaking the insulation from below. Although this is unlikely with the suspended floor it's better to be safe than sorry. Polystyrene insulation was cut and placed around the edges of the blocks to prevent cold-bridging. This introduces a gap ensuring the floor and walls are not connected to the screed and heat isn't conducted away via that route. The insulation was then cut and placed inside the area, the gaps and edges sealed with aluminium tape and then a moisture barrier sheet was laid over the top to stop the wet screed from soaking the insulation from above. The screed was then laid in the same way as with the rest of the room. This type of screed is known as 'floating screed' as it is not bonded to the floor over which it is layed.

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As there aren't many days left in the year and all of the other local businesses are starting to wrap up for the festive period I figure I should do the same. This will give the floor time to dry and allow me to sample what some of the other established breweries in the country have been up to! I wish everyone following the progress of HopForge brewery a very Merry Christmas and I shall be back in the New Year to continue my refurbishments.

 

Written by: Alex

Created: 30 July 2019

Hits: 1822

Phew! It's a been a hot couple of weeks in the UK. The summer heatwave has hit us hard in some places, but here in the HopForge Brewery I can't stop making progress! Now that the sub-floor is completed it was time for me to tackle the trench drain that will be running down the middle of the room. The first stage was to tidy up the edges of the beams that I'd laid. Beams that were cut to the same length and laid against the uneven stone walls ended in different places and resulted in high wigglyness ( technical term again ). I want the drain section to be contained in as square a shape as possible so that we can make a nice straight expansion joint down each side. These edges needed tidying! I'd been thinking about this for a while and decided to try something new this time to see if it would improve the quality of my shuttering. I drilled holes into each of the end blocks and inserted rawlplugs and then screws. Tightening or loosening screws allowed me to adjust the distance of the shuttering from the block and get everything nice and straight. I've found that even 18mm structural plywood will bend under the weight of concrete so I chose to brace both sides thoroughly to reduce warping. It was then a simple matter of pouring concrete into the gap and tamping it down nice and hard.

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Once these blocks were cured I started on the expansion joints. These are a gap left between concrete and a surrounding object to help control cracking when the concrete expands or contracts. This can occur when temperatures change over the course of the year. Professional builders will use a metal expansion joint unit, but these are very expensive and in the past wood coated with bitumen has been used instead. Asphalt fibreboards can also be used if you can find any at all on sale ( I couldn't ). The modern method is to use polyurethane rods which are sweezed into the gap. These then expand or contract as needed. In order to make the gap for the joint I laid a row of polystyrene down each side of the gulley. This will then be scraped out once the concrete is dry, leaving a gap that can be filled. It's very messy and not very environmentally sound but the only option that is cost effective given the amount of expansion joints I need in this building.

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There are multiple ways of installing a drain. One is to tape wooden struts at right angles to the top of the drain. These then support each section as you lower it into the pit, resulting in the whole drain being suspended above the floor. You then pour concrete in and around the base of the drain and once it sets you can remove the wooden struts. This is great for a 3m long garage drain, but it's not really possible to install a 10 metre run by yourself using this method. I considered using wooden struts down the sides of the drain to reinforce the joints between sections and then dragging one end into place. I didn't think would be very easy and the interlocking mechanisms on the ends of the drain sections are very small and easy to dislodge. The other way is to build a slope under the drain and then place each drain segment in the trench and pour concrete around it. The downside to this method is you need to do a good job in getting the slope correct all the way along your trench. I decided to go with this route and use sand to provide the base of the drain. I also needed to factor in that I will be adding screed on top of the concrete blocks which will raise my floor level by around 65mm. I ended up designing a 1% slope, which worked out at 0.57 degrees and a maximum flow rate of 92 UK gallons of liquid per minute. Any more of a slope and the depth of screed I needed to lay at one end of the drain just started getting stupid. I also decided to recess the drain into the trench rather than running the top of the drain in line with the floor screed, again due to the requirements of screed depth at one end. This means at the present time the higher end of the drain will stick up above the current floor level until I lay the screed later. At the drain progresses down the room it will disappear into a trench in the floor. In order to avoid trip hazards and twisted ankles I'll need to cover the whole trench with a second grating.
 
I taped the polystyrene to the sides of the blocks and started laying sand to provide the drain slope I required. This took me three days and about a third of a tonne of sand. Getting the whole slope level was a nightmare but worked well in the end. It was then a simple job to put each drain channel segment in place and seal them together with silicone. I was surprised in the variability of the casting quality of the drain channels. A lot of them didn't fit together well and relied on adding more silicone to plug the errors in the manufacturing process. The drainage channels are made of polymer concrete as these provide excellent chemical resistance and very low thermal reactions in terms on expanding and contracting. I left the silicone to set for 24 hours and then with baited breath performed a test of the channel. Each of the drain segments has it's own circular knockout panel for connecting a pipe to the base of one end. As I predicted quite a lot of water got stuck in the recesses in each channel. I guess this is something I'll have to live with and one of the drawbacks of using precast modular channels. The water stuck here will evaporate or I can run a sponge down the drain to mop up these dregs periodically. It might also be possible to fill in these recesses at a future date, but I can look into that later. Everything was good to go, so I replaced the grates on the top of each channel segment, taped up the tops to avoid the channels getting messy, and backfilled the gap with a weak ( 1 part cement to 6 parts ballast ) mix of concrete. Should I need to replace the drain in the future a weaker mix will make this a lot easier.
 

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Once this is dry I'll be able to start laying out the base for the cold room!

 

Written by: Alex

Created: 25 June 2019

Hits: 30950

I think I'm finally done with the floor! It's honestly a bit of a shock to me as I've been plodding along steadily for months just completing task after task. Today I ran out of tasks so I guess it's done. When I say complete I mean that it's now possible to walk from one side of the brewery to the other without falling down a 5 foot deep hole. I've completed the subfloor which means that I can now start building things on top, like walls, foundations for the cold room and laying the final floor surfaces. I can finally stop being a generic builder and actually start creating the brewery components themselves. What's even more amazing is that I can count on the fingers of one hand the sections of concrete that are left to pour! For those of you that want to see a bit more detail I've included some in progress photos and blurb below. I shall be moving on to installing the drain and cold room base next and hope to step up the frequency of my blog posts now that something interesting is finally happening.

 

Beams, Beams!

In my last blog post I closed with a photo of the completed central wall and ledges on the sides of the room that would support the concrete beams I planned to install. The next step was to source the beams themselves. I contacted a number of companies local to my area and received quotes on manufacturing the beams to my requirements. All of the companies quoted similarly for the construction of the beams to my size specifications and all of them wanted hundreds of pounds for delivery. This was rather dismaying an only left me with the option of buying standard size beams and cutting them to length myself. This was quite a scary prospect as I’d never done anything like this before. I was able to order my first batch of beams from a local builders merchant. They delivered them with a crane and dropped them over my wall at the front of the property. These things are not light! I ended up ordering 6 x 4.5m and 21 x 3m lengths. The next step was to hire a petrol stone saw and cut them into the correct lengths. I enlisted the help of some excellent chaps ( you know who you are ) to help me man-handle them into the place and I was able to then start fitting the blocks.

The process of laying the floor is quite straight-forward but surprisingly time consuming. Beams are spaced out according to the calculated floor plan. Each beam has a ledge on each side and concrete blocks are rested on these like Lego. At the ends of each pair of beams a special block is laid called a slip-block. This is mortared to the base wall and to the underside of the blocks at each end. This prevents the blocks from slipping out and as a bonus prevents anything furry from scuttling up and making a home in the gap between beams under the floor. Ready made slip blocks seems unreasonably expensive – at around £1 per block. I ended up making my own from concrete pavings and this ended up saving me around £80. The gaps between the blocks and beams are filled with mortar. The whole thing is left to dry a couple of days and it’s good to walk on. Obviously due to my beam length being non-standard ( as everything in this project has been! ) I ended up having to cut blocks to size and with all the motor mixing and carrying and filling I found I could lay around 6 spans per day. Finally having a floor section again meant that I could get everything up out of the dirt and prepare for laying the second half of the room.

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Laying a block floor made it quite easy to handle the water pipe. It was just a case of cutting a groove in a block. The fittings to convert the pipe from the old black (1”) pipe down to a sensible modern standard (15mm) turned out to be pretty horrendous. I now have water in the brewery, so that avoids a trip into the house to fill up my buckets from the sink. It was now time to repeat the process for the other side of the room. The beams on this side were slightly shorter, but just to be sure I marked out a reasonable gap for the drain with string in order to help me order the correct sizes. This time I needed 16x4.5m and 1x3m.

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Strong Foundations

Now that 2/3rds of the room had a floor it was possible to move everything from the smaller section of the room and start working on that. The process of turning the foundations of the section into something strong that could support concrete beams was much like the process I used on the longer section of the room. Most of the foundation walls were just dry-stone with dust in between. These all needed to be disassembled and rebuilt from scratch. I even found a circular log that had been used as a joist in the wall. As these were internal walls and were less likely to get as damp as the exterior ones I used cement based concrete and mortar to strengthen them. The section is split into three, a long narrow cavity down the left side and two larger ones on the right. I decided to fill the long cavity with rubble, and concrete and build this up over time rather than trying to span it with beams. The central wall I deemed to be too narrow to support the ends of two beams, and I need to build a new wall to support the drain that would run down the centre of the whole room. The first stage was to dig trenches down each side of the central wall and install trench blocks that would form a new foundation. This turned out to be just as fun as the first time I did it, but luckily the wall is nowhere near as long this time! The process was repeat on the other side of the wall. Due to space restrictions and lack of trench blocks I decided to cast some of the foundation block out of concrete.

Now that I had a foundation in place, I ran string guides to help me lay out the dimensions and direction of the drain support wall and began building my walls. I used dense concrete block, just as I did with the long wall. This turned out to be a rather large structure and I’m pretty confident that it will do an admirable job of supporting the floor. At strategic points in the construction I laid pipe through each wall section to allow air flow under the floor. The main walkway between the two doors in the room is finished with an old concrete slab. I needed to cut this in order to continue the drain through the centre of the room, and to ensure that my block wall was of the correct height. My trusty Wolf “destruction” drill was invaluable during this stage! Typically it was impossible to make both sides of the wall the same height, so I ended up shuttering and pouring a small slab to even things up.

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Now the central wall was in place and I had my height set, I was able to start creating the ledges on which the other end of the beams would rest. The walls around the edges of the cavities were in bad shape and required rebuilding just like everything else. These could then be shuttered and brought up to the same height. Due to the Wigglyness ( technical term ) of the walls it required some creative shuttering in some cases. The back wall under the large window wasn’t actually too bad. Whilst I was waiting for section to dry I cast a concrete slab down the centre of the room to complete the drain run. Once this was dry I installed an expansion joint using sand, polyurethane backing rod and polyurethane sealant. Not stunningly pretty, but functional.

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Finishing up

It was now possible to start installing the final beams. These were around 1.5m long and I managed to carry these in by myself. I guess all that building has it’s advantages! The final sections were all covered with block and beam sections, which made everything look a bit weird until I began filling the gaps in with extra blocks and offcuts of beams. I’ve left the back corner cavity open, as I will be storing my settling tank here. The main drain will empty into this tank and I can sift out solids and dispose of these separately to avoid filling up my main tank outside. I’ll also need access in case of problems with the drain or maintenance work that needs to be done on the tank. I’ve cast a floor down here which allowed to me to use up the remaining concrete pavings . This floor will be coated in epoxy in the future.

All that was left to do was to fill the remaining depth of the long trench to bring it up to the same height as the rest of the floor. I used a lot of stone and old concrete as infill and the resultant slab ended up being around 25+ inches thick. Once I’d managed to get the height of the this trench up to the bottom of the surrounding beams I mortared blocks down to the speed things up. All that remained to do was to cast two concrete slabs to bring the central walkway up to the same level as the beams and to provide support for installing the drainage channels. I still have to surface the areas near each doorway, and this will be probably be done at a later date in screed. Overall it’s been a long slog and I’m happy to be finally moving onto something different!

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Written by: Alex

Created: 06 April 2018

Hits: 2938

It’s been a long time since I last wrote a blog post I’ll admit. I decided to hold off writing about the next adventure at HopForge Brewery until I’d completed a good chunk of work and had something interesting to talk about. Unfortunately the chunk kept growing and growing until I looked up and almost 8 months had gone by! This blog post is therefore a bit of a trudge though a lot of manual work and revolves mostly around a single thing. It’s grey, heavy, boring and hurts your back. It has been my whole life these past months. That’s right – it’s CONCRETE.

We’ll start however talking about a different type of grey sludge. My first task was to repoint the lower walls to ensure that there was a solid base for me to start casting concrete. The section of the room I’m working on is 10m long and 5m wide. All of the pointing between the stones was in a terrible state as I guess it hasn’t seen the light of day since the floor was installed in 1962. You can see from the photo below just how crumbly and basically useless the walls are so I began by working round scraping it all out and smearing new lime mortar into the gaps. I’m pretty pleased with how it now looks and I’m confident that it now shouldn’t fall down. I decided to leave the top row of crumbly mortar in place so as not to disturb the wooden supports as I’ll be using these to make some measurements before I cast the concrete. Lime takes weeks to dry so I moved on to the next job on my list.

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Removing the rubbish fireplace

Lurking midway down the left hand side of the room, under the floor like some malevolent troll is a brick hearth that was probably built the day after bricks were invented. The bricks move when you kick the side and if you pick up one you can quite easily snap it in half with your bare hands. This clearly won’t do for our floor supporting needs, but luckily due to it’s less than sturdy nature it wasn’t much of a challenge to disassemble. The aged barrier however held a rather impressive amount of dirt and rubble inside its weak and wobbly embrace. There were also sticks and the decayed coal from the last fire to be lit in the building to add a bit of flavour. Once I’d hoofed this all outside to my ever growing ‘heap’ I was surprised to find that the structure didn’t hide anything dodgy, and now it looks like it was never there. It did however reveal the reason that it was built. The area behind is an old chimney which has been bricked up. The bricks are all supported by a steel lintel which in turn rests on rocks which themselves sit on the wooden beam. The rocks take up all the space on which the edge of a joist would normally rest, so the brick hearth/monstrosity was built in order to provide a joist rest. I have the option to remove the steel lintel but I’m not keen on finding out what extra work a collapsing pile of bricks in an old chimney will add to my load. I will therefore build a new wall to support my joists – which to be honest cannot be any worse that what was there. 

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Building the new joist support wall footing.

So begins my tale of concrete, my first of many forays into the world of the grey. To build an effective wall I first needed to cast a footing. This should generally be one-and-a-half times the width of the wall itself. I started by creating some shuttering to hold the concrete when mixed and braced them with my trusty firebricks. Once I’d got everything level I cut a damp-proof-membrane to lay underneath before adding the concrete. I did quite a bit of research on the concrete composition and plumped for a 1:3.5 mix of cement:all-in-ballast and added some styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) admixture to strengthen and reducing cracking. I decided to also add some galvanised steel wire mesh to bind the concrete further. It took me around 6 hours to mix all the needed concrete by hand but I managed to produce quite a smooth and level block. I proceeded to water cure the block for 7 days by keeping it covered with a damp sheet that I kept very wet. This curing process helps the concrete to make additional bonds and can result in a slab that is 50% stronger. On removing the shuttering I was pleased that the block was nice and hard and had a good defined edge.

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Lintels and concrete pads.

Whilst my footing were curing and subsequently drying I looked into the problem of spanning the gaps that the air holes make in the supporting walls. The wooden suspended floor just had a continuous wooden beam that ran along the tops of the stone supports and this was fine for bridging the gaps. I needed a non-wood solution and so I started looking at what was available. Prestressed concrete lintels seemed to be a cost effective solution. The lintels in stock at my local builders merchant were a little bit under spec for the floor I’m trying to build so I asked if they could order some heavier duty products from the same manufacturer. They were happy to do so but I needed to wait for their next delivery which was in a couple of weeks. Once they arrived I was able to mortar them in place along my wall. This didn’t turn out to be as easy as I thought, getting a heavy lintel totally level in 3 axes by yourself is a bit tricky to say the least.

Once the lintel was stable and the mortar had dried sufficiently I was able to start measuring and creating the shuttering for my concrete pads. I used the same concrete mix as my footing and mixed up a new batch to fill the area to the left of my first lintel. Happy with my process I cut off the wooden beam to the right of the lintel and prepared shuttering for this too. The concrete process was the same to fill this section. These two sections were left to water cure and the shuttering removed after 4 days.

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Building my first block wall.

In order to carry on along the left-hand side of the room I need to construct a wall the same height as the concrete pads I’d just cast. I decided to build these out of dense concrete blocks. These were rated at 7N/sq mm so were plenty tough enough for the job. I figured it would also be less work then laying a load of bricks. The blocks were easy enough to cut to size using my plunge saw and a diamond disc. The blocks themselves turned out to be quite difficult to work with due to their weight. At 19kg each they were quite a handful to get in position and it was tricky ensuring that I’d got an even amount of mortar under each one before placing them in position. I laid each row of blocks on separate days and didn’t point between them until they’d set in order to avoid disturbing them until the mortar was strong enough that they didn’t move. The last row was laid horizontally as nothing is a uniform height in this building! The last step was to shutter and pour a pad on top of the last row in order to bring it up to the same height as the concrete pad.

Once the pad was dry I was able to use this to create shuttering and place the lintels for the remaining air holes on the left hand side of the room. Annoyingly the lintels did sag a bit due to their weight compressing the mortar I laid. I should be able to correct this issue when I screed the floor at a later date.

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Repairing the centre support, the sand and trenchblock adventure

Now that work on the left hand side of the room was completed I could turn my attention to the centre. Currently there is a stone wall running down the middle of the room. I’d repointed it as part of my lime adventure but when I removed the wooden beams that were still in place on it I noticed that it needed a good deal of repair work. There were large voids in the middle of the wall and all the mortar was crumbling. I was also beginning to doubt the wall was wide enough to support beams and a central drain. I filled the voids in the wall with a mixture of new stone, concrete ( for large voids ) and mortar ( for smaller gaps). I was quite pleased with my new improved support - but it just wasn’t wide enough.

The added cost of widening the centre wall was slightly disheartening. I wasn’t looking forward to sheer amount of manual labour associated with casting 10m long footings to support my additions to the wall. Luckily products exist for this purpose and I decided to buy some Thermalite trench blocks to use instead of mixing the concrete myself. The difference in cost was only around £10 more for the blocks so I booked a delivery. I started to dig a long trench down one side of the wall. I pretty quickly hit clay which made the job somewhat sticky and take longer. I also produced a surprising amount of soil in the process and finding a home for it was a challenge. Creating a level trench in which to place the blocks proved to be an exercise in sand management. I created a layer of around 1 inch of sand and began the time-consuming task of getting each block level and then level with its neighbours. The first trench took me around a week of digging, levelling, measuring and filling, and by the end of it my knees were screaming for a rest. Once installed the long row of blocks did look pretty good. I filled in the area around them with a mixture of sand, ballast and the original soil. The grooves between each block were then filled with a mortar mix ratio specified on the Thermalite webpage.

I took a few days rest to recover and ruminate on what i’d learned before tackling the trench on the other side of the wall. Once dug I noticed that this trench was a lot wetter than the other side had been and I was concerned that I’d dug down below the water table. I decided to raise the level of the blocks to ensure that they weren’t constantly sat in sodden earth, and this would obviously have an effect on the height of the wall I built on that side. It was only after I’d installed and levelled all the trench blocks and filled in that I discovered the water was actually coming from a leak in the roof above.

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Building the central walls.

The central walls would again be dense concrete blocks. They were pretty cheap to buy in bulk. I built a single row of blocks on the edge of my trenchblocks and filled the gap in between the stone wall with a mixture of concrete and large stones. This took a great deal of time as the concrete and mortar needed to set sufficiently to work on the next layer. Luckily I had two sides of the wall and could alternate between them. I decided to build a special wooden frame to help me measure out the correct amount of mortar for each block. I’m not sure what I’m going to call it, but I’m sure something will come to me! The frame is filled with mortar, the block fits snuggly inside and the frame can then be lifted up over the block leaving the mortar underneath. I continued on building the wall for a month or so, laying new horizontal blocks and then a double row of verticals on top.

As the right hand side wall was higher I swapped to using smaller dense concrete coursing bricks. These were incredibly time consuming to lay due to their size and the amount of pointing that needed to be done in between.

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The Cement Mixer Adventure

Christmas was quickly approaching and I was thinking of asking Santa for ‘No more concrete’, but instead my parents bought me a cement mixer! It came packed in a surprisingly small box and I must admit it was quite fun to assemble. Once I finished deciphering the cryptic Chinese instructions I managed to get the drum turning, only to find that the rotation was in the wrong direction. The ‘V’ shaped paddles in a cement mixer are supposed to to push and cut the cement as the drum rotates, but my drum rotated in the opposite direction meaning that in fact they were ‘U’ shaped. This resulted in the concrete mix just being cradled in the paddles and rotating around and around. I contacted the manufacturer but had no solution in sight as the product was made in China. Unfortunately due to the design there was no mechanical solution to the problem, so the only way to fix the issue was to modify the motor to rotate the other way. In a single phase capacitor start induction motor like this one it meant reversing the polarity of the starter coil whilst preserving the polarity of the main coil. During the Christmas period I learned a great deal about these types of motors, but due to the manufacturing process it proved impossible to get to the wires inside the motor as they were wrapped inside the coils themselves. Eventually I was able to reverse the motor by reversing the motor housing and swapping the rotor itself. My concrete making ally was fixed!

 

Finishing off the central wall

The last stage of the central wall involved filling the gaps between the two block walls I’d build to bring it up to the same level as the concrete pads on the left side of the room. I decided to fill as much of the central space with blocks to try and cut down cost ( Blocks are way cheaper than mixing the same volume of concrete). It still required around 1.8 tonnes of concrete to fill things up. I was glad I’d fixed my cement mixer! The final job was to cast a pad on top of the central wall. This involved shuttering and lot of concrete - ( did I say I was getting fed up with concrete? ). What I’m left with now is a nice strong and wide central section, or alternatively my own cat-walk ;)

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The Right Hand Wall

My plan was to tackle the right hand wall in the same way as the left. Remove the wooden beam. Scrap off the mortar, repair and re-point, shutter, place lintels and pour concrete. When examining the air holes on this side of the room I noticed that they were pretty blocked up and damaged. I decided to remove the paneling on the right hand side of the room to allow me to access the damaged area. When removing the old wood I found a note scrawled on the back of one of the planks which said “Dec 31 1907” and a couple of pages of the Daily Mail from July 6^th 1962 which had been used to plug a gap when they installed the floor. The newspaper is still quite readable and some of the articles are very interesting. Removal of the paneling revealed that the air-holes were braced with wooden lintels which had rotted through and the stone had collapsed above. Clearing out the damage I bought some new concrete lintels and repaired the gaps in the wall with lime mortar. The rest of the shuttering and concrete casting was quite uneventful. The temperature at this time of year wasn't really optimal for drying concrete and it didn't help that we had two visits from the "Beast from the East" during the end of the process. I avoided working with any lime or concrete when the temperature was below freezing as it does get pretty nippy inside the brewery building. With temperatures at around -7 degrees I wasn't going to take any chances with wet concrete freezing, and lime mortar can be significantly damaged if ice crystals build up inside whilst drying.

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The Last 8 months

So there we are, we are finally up to date. Over the last 8 months I’ve mixed and laid a mixture of over 8 tonnes of concrete and mortar. Previous to this I'd done very little building work and I'm quite pleased with how everything has turned out. I'm confident that I've created the best foundation I can for the brewery floor with my limited experience in the field, and despite occasional illness, distractions and visits from arctic conditions and heavy storms it's finally done. There is no time to rest as now I can order and install the block and beam floor. 

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