Hi,
Having decided to tackle my garage and make it into a decent home workshop, the first job on the agenda was the floor. Some muppet had clearly laid a screed with far too much sand in resulting in a lunar landscape that I can kick holes in. An SDS with a spade bit revealed the original slab to be good underneath.
I plan to bitumen then re-screed to give some ground damp protection followed up by laying some anti slip vinyl flooring.
Also noticed that there were vertical floor to ceiling cracks in the blockwork walls (big enough to slide a sheet of paper into) I planned to removed damaged blocks and let in new ones....However....
The garage is one block (celcon/thermalite) thick with no supporting columns and hasn't even been pointed properly. It has no gutter between the garages, the wall facing my neighbours garage hasn't been properly pointed and there is no render or cladding of any kind. See pictures.
Having propped the ceiling for safety, I duly set to with a combination of chisel and sds to remove cracked blocks, only to find that the vibration is causing more cracks to appear and trying to free a cracked block invariably causes the blocks either side to crack also!!!
If I press on the wall the whole thing moves a little...the mortar seems to be considerably harder than the blocks themselves which are really lightweight and very crumbly! I resorted to buying a TCT masonry hand saw to try and cut out block by block, but am not having much success....please help!! How should I persist or should I knock it down and start again?
Tony
Having decided to tackle my garage and make it into a decent home workshop, the first job on the agenda was the floor. Some muppet had clearly laid a screed with far too much sand in resulting in a lunar landscape that I can kick holes in. An SDS with a spade bit revealed the original slab to be good underneath.
I plan to bitumen then re-screed to give some ground damp protection followed up by laying some anti slip vinyl flooring.
Also noticed that there were vertical floor to ceiling cracks in the blockwork walls (big enough to slide a sheet of paper into) I planned to removed damaged blocks and let in new ones....However....
The garage is one block (celcon/thermalite) thick with no supporting columns and hasn't even been pointed properly. It has no gutter between the garages, the wall facing my neighbours garage hasn't been properly pointed and there is no render or cladding of any kind. See pictures.
Having propped the ceiling for safety, I duly set to with a combination of chisel and sds to remove cracked blocks, only to find that the vibration is causing more cracks to appear and trying to free a cracked block invariably causes the blocks either side to crack also!!!
If I press on the wall the whole thing moves a little...the mortar seems to be considerably harder than the blocks themselves which are really lightweight and very crumbly! I resorted to buying a TCT masonry hand saw to try and cut out block by block, but am not having much success....please help!! How should I persist or should I knock it down and start again?
Tony
