# Building a new house with a garage!



## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Hey everyone!

So, I'm being a bit presumptuous here and thought I'd start a thread for my house/garage build that is hopefully going to be starting soon...

The garage(and house) won't be huge but it will be the biggest one I've ever had and should be more than comfortable enough. Image of the rough plan is attached but the basic specs are:

- 3.65m wide by 7.4m long internally
- 2.5m wide Hormann sectional up and over garage door with Supramatic motor

I'm still negotiating for a slightly wider garage door but I don't think the budget will allow for it. I'd rather have a smaller door and better motor if it comes down to it.

I'm hoping to fill the rest of the back wall (with the door to the house in it) with IKEA kitchen cabinets. I'm thinking two highline cabinets, one either side and two base cabs with a worktop and two wall cabs above those. The plan is to have one of the highline cabs contain my PW and hoses.

The door in the back wall opens into our laundry room which will also have a load of IKEA kitchen cabinets and a large sink. There won't be a sink in the garage but there wil be a hot and cold water feed with a drain point, taken from the laundry room.

The car shown in the plan is the relative size to the garage of the larger of our two cars, the 308SW. Like I say, there won't be an epic amount of space but it should be enough to move around the car with relative comfort.

I also have rough ideas for mounting commonly used gear on some of the wall space etc, but nothing firm yet. I intend to keep the sides of the garage as clear as I possibly can to retain the space around the car. The garage will be open to the roof and will actually extend over the laundry room ceiling so there should be some useful storage space there in the end for lesser used stuff.

I'm super excited obviously and will send updates as things move along!

All the best!

Ollie


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## J306TD (May 19, 2008)

Sub'd good luck Ollie. I'd love to self build one day #keepdreaming

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## macmaw (Mar 5, 2007)

That looks a good size with nice room to work around the car. I wish my garage was longer.


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## grunty-motor (Aug 11, 2016)

That looks a decent size. Built onto the house?

Insulation and heating would be high on the list of any garage project for me. A sectional insulated door was a revelation when we moved away from the old metal up&over.


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## galamaa (Aug 3, 2014)

Do you have enough overroom, if you open the car doors?


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## Rundie (Oct 2, 2007)

grunty-motor said:


> A sectional insulated door was a revelation when we moved away from the old metal up&over.


No brainer imo, I moved to a new build and the first thing I did was change the GRP up and over for an Insulated sectional door. Far stronger being pressed steel with 30mm foam in between, seals properly too on all sides.


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

grunty-motor said:


> That looks a decent size. Built onto the house?
> 
> Insulation and heating would be high on the list of any garage project for me. A sectional insulated door was a revelation when we moved away from the old metal up&over.


Yep, it's built on the north side of the house. The south wall joins the kitchen/diner/lounge space and the east wall joins the laundry room.

I would love to have a fully insulated garage but it just increases our budget too much sadly. Luckily I live in France and the winters where we are tend to not be too cold. The insulated garage door plus the fact that half the sides of the garage will attach to heated/insulated house should keep it from being uncomfortable on the really cold days. Plus, since it isn't huge, a small space heater should be able to help by a couple of degrees if absolutely needed. I have already considered that I might end up adding some insulation later which would lose me maybe 50mm on the north and west walls, but we'll see...


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

galamaa said:


> Do you have enough overroom, if you open the car doors?


Ideally I would have managed to get the internal width to 4m but the best I could manage within the build limits was 3.64. If the car was parked dead in the middle of the garage there should be enough room to open the front doors on both sides to at least the first stop point on the hinge, if not the full travel. The rear doors of course open less than the fronts. boot and bonnet opening would be no issue at all. The width is a slight compromise for sure, but I'll take what I can get!


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

The house as a whole looks like this right now...


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

A small update. We sent our plan for the house to the developer today. Because our plot of land is raised from street level, we've decided to keep the house higher up but drop the level of the garage to retain a flat, street-level driveway.

This means we keep a flat entry into the gaage and for parking the cars outside which is far better than having an incline. The compromise is that we will need to have steps in the garage to reach the level of the house and as a result, will lose a little floor space in the garage. Thankfully it doesn't look like it'll be excessive, but still a shame. There should still be comfortable space for the cars though. A slight positive however is that it will mean the garage has much higher internal walls so I should be able to do more with the wall storage options maybe.

Here's a quick 3D render of how it might look with the stairs, kitchen cabinets at one end and the bigger car parked inside. The distance between the front of the car and the stairs looks tight but in reality it is almost a metre so still easy to pass by.


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## grunty-motor (Aug 11, 2016)

you should swap the "Salon" and the garage....that would be EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

grunty-motor said:


> you should swap the "Salon" and the garage....that would be EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!


Haha, why stop there, who needs bedrooms and bathrooms after all!


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## vsideboy (Sep 1, 2006)

Have you considered putting the kitchen adjacent to the main room at the bottom of the plan nd put the main bedroom at the top? If you decided to knock through the room and kitchen in future it would be easier.

Yeah I've watched far too many home improvement programs on the tv!


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

vsideboy said:


> Have you considered putting the kitchen adjacent to the main room at the bottom of the plan nd put the main bedroom at the top? If you decided to knock through the room and kitchen in future it would be easier.
> 
> Yeah I've watched far too many home improvement programs on the tv!


We've considered a whole bunch of options honestly and this is the best we have right now. We'll never knock through into any of the 4 bedrooms/bathrooms as we've got plenty of space in the main living space for our kitchen, diner and lounge, plus we need 4 bedrooms for us and the kids plus regular visits from UK grandparents!

As it stands, the kitchen would be bottom-left below the entry door, the diner in the middle and the lounge to the right, next to the largest bedroom with ensuite which is our bedroom. I should also say that eventually we plan to build a wall to enclose our lounge area, but we're leaving it open plan in the original build so we can get a feel for the space before we commit. Having a separate lounge is just how we prefer to live. All told this arrangement puts the kids rooms far away from any noise should we have guest over etc.


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## vsideboy (Sep 1, 2006)

sorry mate, my fault for being lazy I should've made an effort to see what the words meant before posting. Made a presumption that bureau would be the kitchen but thinking about it now I would probably decide otherwise for the meaning of bureau.


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## blademansw (May 23, 2011)

I look forwards to seeing some build pics.... got my own project ongoing at the moment but there hasn't been much progress lately due to Xmas/weather.


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

vsideboy said:


> sorry mate, my fault for being lazy I should've made an effort to see what the words meant before posting. Made a presumption that bureau would be the kitchen but thinking about it now I would probably decide otherwise for the meaning of bureau.


Haha, no worries buddy. It's not easy when it's in another language and it's missing walls for context!

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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

blademansw said:


> I look forwards to seeing some build pics.... got my own project ongoing at the moment but there hasn't been much progress lately due to Xmas/weather.


I'll keep it updated as we go along for sure. I don't expect many 'action' shots to happen for at least another couple of months though since we haven't even validated the final plan and got the mortgage yet. Exciting though!

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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Wow, it's been a long few months since my last update! Unfortunately I still don't have build photo's for you yet but we have made progress moving things forward. We've now finalised our plans and have received our planning permission for the build. Next steps will be to complete the purchase of the land and then groundbreaking will just be down to finding construction crew and materials. Building trades are in huge demand here right now so we expect this to be a delay. It's likely that the actual build now won't start until maybe November (sad face...).

So far as the plan itself goes, The garage should end up being 3.60 x 7.10 metres so a pretty reasonable space. It should be enough to move pretty comfortably around the car, maybe with a little jiggling at times for some jobs. The garage will have a dedicated water point and drainage plus plenty of power points. I'm still working on the lighting, it might start out pretty limited but eventually I'd like it to have some all-around quality strip lights. The garage door will be a Hormann sectional up-and-over, powered by a Supramatic unit. I went for up-and-over because I didn't want to lose any of my limited width to a side-sliding door, even though it would have been nice.


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Just a small update this time... We've now completed the purchase of the land so the next step is to see when the developer can start construction! Exciting times, but we're still bracing ourselves for it not being as quick as we'd like.


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

Brilliant news mate 👍👍


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## Andyblue (Jun 20, 2017)

Excellent news on the purchase of the land, so onwards now 👍🏻


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Yep, it's a big step forward! Just need to hope we see some actual construction this year! 🤞 Updates will of course follow!


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

IT HAS BEGUN! Rubbish photo due to failing light as I came home from work but the important thing is that machines are onsite and land is being dug! Better photos to follow as things progress.


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

olliewills said:


> IT HAS BEGUN! Rubbish photo due to failing light as I came home from work but the important thing is that machines are onsite and land is being dug! Better photos to follow as things progress.


I was expecting a second picture with the 360 covered in snowfoam 😎😎.
Brilliant news mate 👍👍👍


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> I was expecting a second picture with the 360 covered in snowfoam 😎😎.
> Brilliant news mate 👍👍👍


Haha, that's a tomorrow job! Been in the office a couple of days this week so the car picked up more dirty than usual. Managed to snap a better photo of the plot this morning though! They've got some depth still to dig to bring the garage down to near road level!


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

We now have a smaller hole inside a bigger hole which will eventually become the garage! We can also start to get an idea of the small slope we'll have in the driveway... Good news is that foundations should be getting poured next week so they're really pressing on!


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

olliewills said:


> We now have a smaller hole inside a bigger hole which will eventually become the garage! We can also start to get an idea of the small slope we'll have in the driveway... Good news is that foundations should be getting poured next week so they're really pressing on!


Looks like you have a decent terrassier there. Very quick progress 👍👍


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> Looks like you have a decent terrassier there. Very quick progress


To be fair I think a lot of it is down to the mason who has been Johnny on the spot and pushing things along and getting it sorted. 

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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Footings for the house have been dug. You can see the garage space more clearly now.


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## Andyblue (Jun 20, 2017)

Coming along


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Andyblue said:


> Coming along


Conscious that this could turn into something of a house build thread, not just the garage though! Think I'll have to filter the updates going forward so I don't spam the thread with daily photos of light switches or toilet bowls being installed! 

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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Foundations for the garage have poured!


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

You house is going to be build quicker than you detail one of your cars !!


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> You house is going to be build quicker than you detail one of your cars !!


Based on the fact that I started a full correction on the 308 in June and we're now December and I'm still not finished, you might be entirely accurate! 

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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

olliewills said:


> Based on the fact that I started a full correction on the 308 in June and we're now December and I'm still not finished, you might be entirely accurate!
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk


Perhaps 308 is the days it takes to detail one 🧽

Anyway no pics since Tuesday, they must be roofing it by now ?🏗🏗🏗


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> Perhaps 308 is the days it takes to detail one
> 
> Anyway no pics since Tuesday, they must be roofing it by now ?


Lol, you might be right!

Haha, no pics because we've had a few days bad cold/frost. I think they're allowing extra time for the foundations to go off hence no pics. About the only thing to show is the delivery of bits ready to lay the floor slab....
















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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

Great progress👍. A nice tidy site to, a sign of a great mason. I hope your keeping your garage planning up to the same speed?


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> I hope your keeping your garage planning up to the same speed?


Well, I have a bunch of ideas but I'm well prepeared for the fact that it's going to take a while to get the garage where I want it! Honestly to start with I'll just be happy to have a space that is my own. The garage is going to start off as a cold, dusty, empty, poorly insulated, poorly lit space. My highest priority is probably to get some kind of 'kitchen cabinet' installation at the one end which can be used for storage of all my gear. Once I've got that I'll focus on things like lighting, insulation, flooring etc.

Eventually I'd like to have a hose reel for my 20m PW hose, positioned close to the garage door maybe. I'm going to have fairly high ceilings in the garage since it is lower than the main house so I'm hoping to make use of this height somehow. I already plan to have all my bottles and regular use kit mounted on hangars/shelves on the walls, probably just above my shoulder height so they don't impact passing down the side of he car. Once I've lived with the garage for a while I'll know how best to handle the insulation. I really don't want to lose previous limited width so whatever I end up doing will be bare minimum thickness, maybe just the 5cm depth for the metal framing and plasterboard or something.... Insulating the roof would probably save the most heat loss though so that should bedo-able with no concerns for space. 

I'l be a voyage of discovery that is for sure!


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

Sounds like it’s not forgotten then 🛠

It sounds that you have plenty of height. This lot could be of interest 






Photos de rangements modulables garage pour vélo, outils et coffre de toit Lodus


Découvrez nos photos de rangements pour garage Lodus. Ces solutions de stockage ergonomiques vous permettent de ranger vélos, coffre de toit et outils dans un espace restreint.




www.lodus.fr


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> Sounds like it’s not forgotten then
> 
> It sounds that you have plenty of height. This lot could be of interest
> 
> ...


That does look like some kind of material fair play! Not sure it would be a great fit with the layout of our garage though. We won't have beams in the garage but I'd rather not have stuff above the car anyway. I'm going I can make the most of the high walls though....

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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

olliewills said:


> That does look like some kind of material fair play! Not sure it would be a great fit with the layout of our garage though. We won't have beams in the garage but I'd rather not have stuff above the car anyway. I'm going I can make the most of the high walls though....
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk


It does look nice Kit. Garage layout means I can’t have any myself due to door position. Shame


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> It does look nice Kit. Garage layout means I can’t have any myself due to door position. Shame


I could probably fit some in the recess next to the steps down into the garage but that's where I'd planned to have my kitchen cabinets/workbench as it's away from the car and where the water and power points will mainly be. I really need to think about electrics soon too....

Incidentally, were back in the UK for a few days now for Christmas with my family!

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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

olliewills said:


> I could probably fit some in the recess next to the steps down into the garage but that's where I'd planned to have my kitchen cabinets/workbench as it's away from the car and where the water and power points will mainly be. I really need to think about electrics soon too....
> 
> Incidentally, were back in the UK for a few days now for Christmas with my family!
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk


Have a very happy Christmas. If you are in Blighty machine mart have a huge sale on if you have boot space 👍👍


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> Have a very happy Christmas. If you are in Blighty machine mart have a huge sale on if you have boot space


You have a great Christmas too! And everyone else reading this!

Haha, the other half would love that! I've already filled the sub-level of the boot with a bunch of stuff from In2detailing so I think the space left will have to be kept for suitcases and all the inevitable new toys our boys will acquire!

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## IvorB1H (6 mo ago)

Halfords sell roof boxes 🤭


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

IvorB1H said:


> Halfords sell roof boxes


Ha! Don't joke, we almost brought the trailer with us!

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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

A little more progress while we were away. Will have to wait until new year for more now I think.
















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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

With the new year comes more progress! With any luck they might be pouring the floor slab next week... Rest of the house is also moving forward at pace which is cool.


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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

Never seen a suspended beam and block floor in a garage before. Did an engineer do calcs to prove it’ll support a car?


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Bratwurst said:


> Never seen a suspended beam and block floor in a garage before. Did an engineer do calcs to prove it’ll support a car?


I'm led to believe it's a very common technique over here and there are many other houses in our estate with the same construction from different developers so I have to believe it'll be fine.

But lets all be honest, we know it only really has to support all the detailing gear that will end up being piled in it! 🤣


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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

Fair enough man. If it’s the done thing and it passes the loading then that’s just lovely.


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Bratwurst said:


> Fair enough man. If it’s the done thing and it passes the loading then that’s just lovely.


I will make the point of asking the question though! So nice to have input on this kind of thing from interested people! I'm really enjoying seeing it come together actually because it's a whole new construction technique to what I'm used to. I'm taking sooooo many photos!


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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

Just thinking about this, say you drive your car in, and either the two fronts, or the two rear tyres line up with one beam, that’s averaging around 7.5kN / 750kg… that’s a fair load on one beam, plus it’s a fair span as well. Worth mentioning this I think tonight, just to check it can take the point load of a car. The floor as a whole may accept the load of the car but in this case that point load capacity is crucial to the floor.


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Bratwurst said:


> Just thinking about this, say you drive your car in, and either the two fronts, or the two rear tyres line up with one beam, that’s averaging around 7.5kN / 750kg… that’s a fair load on one beam, plus it’s a fair span as well. Worth mentioning this I think tonight, just to check it can take the point load of a car. The floor as a whole may accept the load of the car but in this case that point load capacity is crucial to the floor.


Interesting and I will certainly ask the mason next time I see him. I'm no structural engineer so don't pretend to know about these things but I suppose that once the reinforced screed layer goes down over the top of the beams/blocks, that presumably has some load spreading ability which might negate the issue? Say for example spreading any point load on one beam to the 2 beams either side of it or something?


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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

A screed will certainly help, yes, but a simple finishing screed won’t do, it’ll basically need to be a reinforced cast slab on top, with some decent mesh, A393 probably, so you’re looking at a bare min of 100mm/4” deep slab on top. But yes, have the chat with your engineer. Just chewing the cud sir 👍🏻


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

Bratwurst said:


> A screed will certainly help, yes, but a simple finishing screed won’t do, it’ll basically need to be a reinforced cast slab on top, with some decent mesh, A393 probably, so you’re looking at a bare min of 100mm/4” deep slab on top. But yes, have the chat with your engineer. Just chewing the cud sir 👍🏻


French building regs. You have to have a vide underneath the building for plumbing. This enables access to make easy changes to room locations and easy maintenance. If like us and Ollie you have a bungalow it makes life very easy as regs changed a few years ago that all showers must be walk in to cover people with disabilities that may visit or future own the house. So if you change you layout it’s a simple new hole into the vide.
They will pour concrete next and tonnes of it not just screed. I think ours was 6 inches from memory. We refer to ours as our bomb shelter. 
If you think the building regs are odd you should see the planning regs 🙈🙈💩💩💩


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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

Sound. A 150mm reinforced slab plus the beam and block should eat the load no bother. Thank you for clearing that up.


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

Bratwurst said:


> Sound. A 150mm reinforced slab plus the beam and block should eat the load no bother. Thank you for clearing that up.


No worries, it was our first French new build nearly 2 years ago and there’s a few ‘different’ ways they do things for sure. Seems to have held my weight ok 🤪


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

Bratwurst said:


> Sound. A 150mm reinforced slab plus the beam and block should eat the load no bother. Thank you for clearing that up.


If I'm not mistaken they'll basically be filling in the rest of the space inside those edge blocks with reinforced concrete like 121DOM said. If so it really will be a thick old slab! 

Anyway, pictures will soon follow!

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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

Sure will 👍🏻


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## Eddmeister (May 6, 2011)

Bratwurst said:


> Never seen a suspended beam and block floor in a garage before. Did an engineer do calcs to prove it’ll support a car?


Nah reckon he's just done this for a laugh


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## Bratwurst (Jan 23, 2009)

You’d be surprised to see the things that some unscrupulous contractors and homeowners are willing to do to save time/money. Look up “Edinburgh schools wall collapses”, noting the plural. A contractor who made a cost saving choice which was initially seen by some as nothing, when in reality no wall ties is a disaster for a cavity wall. Same contractor did same thing across numerous sites all because nobody piped up. There’s at least one photo of a 12m high 15m long brick wall that came down in a school playground a few hours before the kids were due in. Folk don’t think about consequences when cutting corners.


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

The strangest part for us was when the police came around with a measure to check every external wall length . Apparently non conformity can be up to €30,000 fine or pull the place down. No wonder you see the brickies using tape measures as much as trowels.
Anyway great progress Ollie 👍👍👍👍


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> The strangest part for us was when the police came around with a measure to check every external wall length . Apparently non conformity can be up to €30,000 fine or pull the place down. No wonder you see the brickies using tape measures as much as trowels.
> Anyway great progress Ollie


Funnily enough our future neighbor across the road from us has been kinda casting an eye over things. Talking to him the other day, he even said how often he sees them double checking everything with laser measures. So I guess that's a good sign!

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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

A little more progress has been made on the garage and the house in general. We had a small delay as we realised that the builders had placed the boiler in the wrong corner of the utility room behind the garage. We've contacted the developer and they're going to get it fixed but I guess it'll mean the slab gets poured a little latern than it might have otherwise been. Thankfully we've been taking plenty of photos and keeping our eyes open!

For those interested, in the photo with my finger where thebgarage slab will be poured, the part of my finger touching the side of the block is about 3inches so it gives you some idea of the final slab depth.


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## 121DOM (Sep 16, 2013)

For those interested, in the photo with my finger where thebgarage slab will be poured, the part of my finger touching the side of the block is about 3inches so it gives you some idea of the final slab depth.
[/QUOTE]

Are you sure it’s not pointing to the exact spot you DI vessel will sit 😎😎😎😎

Great progress, you must be chuffed


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## olliewills (Feb 10, 2017)

121DOM said:


> Are you sure it’s not pointing to the exact spot you DI vessel will sit 😎😎😎😎
> 
> Great progress, you must be chuffed


Haha, no, the DI vessel is in a different corner and marked by a big red X I sprayed on the floor. 😁 But yes, very chuffed to see it coming along. I'm looking forward to when the slab is poured and dry and I can actually walk the space!


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