Only two hours work, 1/4 of the footprint complete. Time for the morning tea break! No rain yet - fingers crossed!
The limecrete machine had 2 hoppers, one loaded with aggregate and one with lime, and a water tank. Here you can see the aggregate coming down the conveabelt, shortly to be mixed with the lime and water to produce limecrete.
The mix went in very dry - water content was carefully monitored by the Limecrete Company. This created a very consistent mix.
The 7.2 metre hand tamp reached from one side to the other. The hand tamp was moved from side to side, sawing off the excess material to give a level textured finish.
The first row almost complete.
Tipping the first row of limecrete. We used boards to wheel the barrows over to avoid rucking up the LECA sub-base.
The first of many barrows being loaded with the limecrete mix.
The weather forecast for today was terrible - rain predicted from 8am-6pm. Geotextile membrane and polythene sheet laid out in sections by the side (wimbledon style!) of the slab incase of a downpour!
The Big Green Limecrete Machine arrives bright and early!
All the geotextile laid. Now we wait until Tuesday to lay the limecrete.
Day 49 - Laying the LECA (part 2)
The last 3 days in 30 seconds!
Carefully holding it down against the wind without rucking the LECA up!
Last job was to lay another sheet of geotextile membrane over the top. Breezy conditions made this quite a challenge! We could not walk on the LECA at this point, unless on scaffold boards.
The levelling and compaction process!
It seems that you need to allow plenty of extra LECA, because an extra 5-6 cubic metres (12-15%) went into the base than we were anticipating. Our internal ground floor area is 95sqm, with the LECA laid to 365mm deep. That equates to 36 cubic metres, so allowing for compaction etc we expected to use 39 cubic metre bags as ordered. We actually ended up using 44.5 cubic metre bags. Luckily we had ordered extra to fill the cavity which we could use instead. We will now need to re-order more for the cavity.
The LECA before and after compacting. It is important to get a consistent level otherwise you could end up with the limecrete slab being thicker in some areas than in others.
Scaffold boards were then laid over the levelled LECA, and finally compacted using a sledge hammer or hand compactor. If we had used a wacker plate, we would have been at risk of crushing the LECA to dust.
