Finishing touches

Friday, This is us doing the finishing touches to the house foundations, we are putting the stone chippings onto the surface of the breeze blocks, these were prepared on Tuesday, when we put the light render onto the surface. The reason why I am doing this at this stage is twofold, 1, if we wait until the ground is filled in, it makes for an exceedingly uncomfortable working position, you are either bent double or on your knees, 2, the house actually overlaps the breezeblocks, making it very difficult to get the adhesive all the way to the top same goes for the stone chips.

Start off by giving the surface a light going over with a carborundum stone, just to make sure that there are no sticky up bits adhering to the surface. after this is done, lightly moisten the surface that you are going to apply the adhesive to, this is a cement based adhesive, designed for this purpose. The adhesive is applied with a toothed trowel onto the surface of the blocks.



Application of the adhesive, with the toothed trowel.
After the surface has been coated, proceed to smooth out the adhesive, the reason for this is, using a toothed trowel, ensures that an equal amount of adhesive is applied and that the coating is of the same depth.

Smoothing out the surface, in preparation for the stone chips.
Ari applying the stone chips, these vary in size, from 2 mm to 6 mm, we did it by hand, there is a special trowel on the market, but it takes a bit of getting used to, so we just did it the old fashioned way. Just throw the chippings onto the still wet adhesive, maintaining an even covering all the way.

Finally, once the chips are on the surface, lightly press them into the adhesive, this ensures that they are bedded in properly, the finished surface needs no maintenance after this, that is it.

Detail of corner.

All visible surfaces covered with chippings, the base is now ready for filling, all that takes is a digger with driver, 180 cubic meters of gravel, that should happen on Monday, over the next couple of days we will be doing some insulation to the ground and putting some of the rainwater drainage system in place.