Corriform or alternative shuttering?

[Delinquent]

Is it worth the money to use Corriform, or will the BCO be happy if you shove whatever you have to hand in for shuttering a ring beam? I've got half a dozen sheets of very thick conservatory roofing plastic (polycarbonate rather than the polypropylene of Corriform) and was thinking I could just use that! A penny saved here, a penny saved there 'n all that!

 

[Shytalkz]

You can use whatever you want, just make sure that it's adequately propped for when the concrete goes in and the poker starts on it. The purpose of it is to control the volume of concrete that you're putting in, as much as anything.

The only exception would be where you need void formers in clay soils, when clearly you would need the proper stuff - in days of yore, we used to use polystyrene and then get rid of it after curing by pouring petrol on it. Elfin Safety put paid to that practice...life is just no fun these days.

 

[Delinquent]

ta. It'll be adequately propped by virtue of the fact I'm hacking the trenches out of what I've been told is various grades of sand and sandstone - bit of a bitch to get through with a spade and wheelbarrow but the upside is the trench sides can be "sliced" to near vertical and to mm accuracy, so I can cut them to the beam size plus the thickness of the shuttering easily - there would only be 75mm or so sticking above ground level

There are a couple of annoying bits where the sand has given way to gravel, but other than that I probably don't need the shuttering for anything other than "because it's good practice"!

 

[Shytalkz]

There are a couple of annoying bits where the sand has given way to gravel, but other than that I probably don't need the shuttering for anything other than "because it's good practice"!

And to avoid the need to increase the side cover to the links to 75mm, of course!

 

[Delinquent]

yeah, that too.