Early morning building challenge

[RogerS]

Morning, chaps. A little problem to get those grey cells going this morning...

Builder's coming this morning to lay some sandstone steps. A cross-section here.

The sandstone steps each weigh 150 kg and I want to have them end up sitting directly on top of each other as shown. So he needs to make blockwork underneath to support them...again, roughly as shown. Thing is, the accuracy of each tread height has to be mm perfect which, thinking about the roughness of the blocks is not possible. So I'm thinking about possibly setting each blockwork level (5mm ?) below the finish height then when we come to lay the treads, set plastic spacers on top of the blockwork support for each tread to provide a level surface for the tread and then laying a thin layer of 'what?' to sit the tread on.

Or I was wondering about making two templates out of ply to give him levels to work to - one at each side...but you know what builders are like ....they'll probably get knocked out of whack and so upset the levels.

Any suggestions ?

TIA

 

[Doug71]

I would let the builder do it however he thinks best, he is the builder.

 

[SammyQ]

Seconded. He will have met all sorts of tricky installs and will have experience to beat the band.

Sam

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Seconded. He will have met all sorts of tricky installs and will have experience to beat the band.

:lol: :lol: :roll: You must have a better class of builder round your way. Mind you, I don't fancy the job of telling the builder just how you think he should do it. Sure to get the job off to a great start !

 

[Lons]

Hi Roger
Any builder worth his salt would have absolutely no problem with that but why does it have to be mm perfect? I would say that because the tolerances of the slabs will be no where near that you would just make it more difficult with thin bed layer and spacers though it can be done.

The guy will be quite capable of forming support blockwork leaving a standard mortar bed to position and level the slabs. i could do that in my sleep, and no not interested, I'm retired. :lol: :lol:

 

[RogerS]

Many thanks to all for the suggestions. Sheffield Tony's post made me smile. Michael (my builder) is brilliant. He and his team have been working for us on and off for the last two years now. I worked alongside them, shared the banter, the jokes, the wet, the dust. We all have a good craic and he'd never take issue with me telling him what to do. We'd have a good discussion and then we'd do it his way

Seriously, how many people's builders give them 11 brace of wild duck and 20 brace of pheasant that they'd shot ?

Back to the OT...I fussed unnecessarily. You were right...he just cracked on although not quite according to plan. Given the weight of the steps, we'd agreed that he'd come with three others and that while he and A N Other were building the blockwork, the other two would be working down a long list of grotty jobs outside that would help me and SWMBO. Then, when the heavy lift was needed, they'd help.

But Michael only had AN Other today and they just cracked on. They manhandled the steps - just the two of them. :shock:

This is it - close of play today.



The downside is that I now have to do that long list

 

[ColeyS1]

Very tidy work !

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[Lons]

Looks good Roger, nice stone!

Should have tried installing these steps, by hand, 2 of us, barn steps were approx 1000 x 400 x 300 and the top slab 1000 x 600 x 100.
Garage / tack room steps were approx 1000 x 350 x 280.

Ached for days after that lot, slid up scaffold poles with ropes and a lot of swearing. :lol:

 

[sammy.se]

Very nice indeed.
Have you thought about if/how you will seal them?

 

[MikeG.]

Should have tried installing these steps........

I like those arches. Are they 3 centred?

 

[MikeG.]

.......This is it - close of play today.

That spirit level is showing the unimportant way. More important is having a very slight fall towards the front of the steps, so that water doesn't pool on them.

 

[Lons]

Should have tried installing these steps........

I like those arches. Are they 3 centred?

That's how I designed them Mike but didn't quite work out. Made a couple of ply templates and as I was pushed for time I cut and numbered individual templates and outsourced the cut stone however when delivered it was so bad I had to re-cut every stone on site with a stilsaw, bl**dy nightmare, added a full day to the job and arches not exactly as planned! Customer was very happy though.
Did you notice the ammolite built into the wall next to the steps, one of 3 we put in for her.

 

[RogerS]

Sammy...good question. My wife asked me the same thing this evening. I think the answer is nothing because....mmmmm...how can I put this? We have a suspicion that the stone we chose is not the stone we got . But it's one of those...difficult to prove. So the alternative is to find a way to weather them ASAP and so sealing would stop that.

MikeG...he's ahead of you !! Already put a fall on.

The one thing is alignment with the existing steps. We had a long discussion this morning as I thought his reference post was too far to the left. Very difficult...the original Georgian steps and pillars on the next level aren't themselves dead inline. My approach was to take a line down the face of the existing side wall stones. Then measure out from them, the few cm needed to accommodate the line needed for the slightly wider new steps. He was proposing going off the pillars and a side step. We compromised by taking a point in the front door and pediment as our reference and then striking a line from there through the middle of the top step of the original steps. And that said that his post was correct.

But. But I hadn't realised that somewhere along the line, the string we were using as the centre line had got moved. Looking up the new steps now you can see that my post was correct Also born out serendipitously by the concrete pad...the steps aren't central on that.

Just have to go with it.