one for builders

[naughtyboy]

am doing my drive in new year at moment its compacted soil and steep which isnt prob for my landy but looking at building locost.
top flat area of drive is 4" thick concrete including lip at front that rest two waffle boards on when i take old girl up.
my drive is 9mx2.5m how much ballast will i need?
and how bags of cement?

cheers

 

[mike os]

cheaper and a better job to get redimix... well OK its near enough the same price, I cant mix 2.5tonnes for a tenner.

at 100mm you would need 2.25m3 concrete, ideally on 100-150mm compacted hardcore (5-6tonnes)

However you cannot just concrete your drive anymore...new regulations (2008iirc) mean that it has to be permiable, have stormwater storage or be connected to a soakaway, or drains if permitted... best to check with someone locally ( builder or council will advise)

 

[pedrobedro]

I work on 2.5 ton per cubic metre which gives 5.6 ton roughly. 4 ballast to 1 cement so divide by 5 gives 1.1 ton of cement and 4.5 ton of ballast. Get spotmix in

 

[JayRS4]

Needless to say dont bother doing anything until the weather gets better

 

[Will1983]

yep way to cold for concrete at the moment.. we had to pull some out today that we risked laying yesterday..

by the way concrete is 2.4 tonnes per meter cube. 2.25m2 = 5.4T
so using a rough mix ratio of 4:2:1 gives the following;
3086kg - aggregate
1543kg - sand
771kg - cement

5.4T is a serious amount of concrete to mix and its highly unlikely you would be able to do it all in one day which arises the issues of cold joints and cracking. i personally wouldn't risk it, you only need for your mixer to break down and you'd have to do it all by hand. definitely use a ready mix concrete supplier as you can ensure the mix will be consistent and you can specify how workable you want it.

as for drainage look into using an ACO style drain system crossing the full width of the driveway with a pipe from the sump unit running to a soak away.