Neat cement is nasty stuff. It is so-o-o-o brittle and hard to work that it's not a good idea. Semi-dry would be ok, as long as you get it properly compacted. For small repairs, I would be happy enough to use a semi-dry mortar, but, for 6-8m², I'd be happier with grano, especially for any spots deeper than 6mm. 30-40mm of mortar isn't particularly strong, hardwearing or tough, which is why Grano would be my preferred option.

I'd still use grano, though, rather than plain sand and cement mortar.  

Maybe there's a market for exporting Grano to the southern regions???  

To be safe and comply with the Manual Handling Regs, then what you really need is a digger or crane of some sort, perhaps a little mini-digger or a JCB, as that's the safest way to handle these steps, but then, is it feasible to take a machine such as that into your garden?

Bedding the steps - they really do need to be laid on a bed of concrete, as that's the only way to ensure that they are firm, secure and level, and will stay that way.

I suspect that you really need to consider bringing in a professional landscaper or groundworker to help you with these steps, as it's not the sort of job best suited to the average diy-er. One slip, and you could seriously injure yourself, or, god forbid, someone else!

To be honest, I can't tell you exactly how it would be done on your particular project, as I don''t have enough information at present, and I'd much rather actually see the site than guess at what it might be like, but I'll talk you through the basics and then you'll have to adapt it to your site or kidnap a passing surveyor!  

Firstly, the setting out of the radius. For this, you need the origin, but, if that's not available, then you can use a 'chord' method, as explained on the "Obstructed Arcs" page of the Setting Out section. The simplest method is to set out the points on the arcs and then use a vertical staff to transfer the "plane position" to ground position. The points established by swing an arc from the origin, or from a subtended chord, are assumed to be on a flat plane. However, the ground slopes so dramatically on this site that the position of the arc points needs to be dropped below the level of the plane, so you need to ensure you can set out these points 'plumb' (true vertical) from the assumed plane - confused? You will be!!

So, for setting out the arcs (internal and external radii), assume a 2 dimensional flat plane (forward/back + right/left) and then rely on plumb lines (or a vertical spirit level) to transfer position into the third dimension (up/down).

Next comes the problem of establishing the paving level at each required point on the arcs. Let's assume that you've now established the alignment of the arcs and have driven in a number of road pins at regular intervals, and, on this project, I reckon a suitable interval would be 2-3 metres.

The profile for the finished paving will not be what is called a "flat bone", that is a straight line of sight from the top of the access road to the garage floor (the orange line on the sketch), but should be a sine curve (the purple line) which allows a smooth transition to and from the garage and the access road.

It's also important to consider what is going to happen to the surface water on this pavement. You need some form of drainage to prevent the garage becoming flooded. You could lay a linear drain across the garage threshold, or a gully at, say, 1 metre away from the grage threhold and 75mm lower than the garage floor, but you must have some method installed before you lay the paving.

Do they use some kind of laser or ultrasonic ranging equipment?

Almost - they might use a dead fancy theodolite or grandly titled "Earth Station" that can define angles in 3 planes as well as distance, but, if it were me, I'd be using a long staff and spirit level. After all, if it's there or thereabouts, then it's right, as it's a simple kerb line and, if it's grossly out of place, it would soon become pretty apparent!  

Seems to be essential for the various forums (fora?) I'm reading

Forumses!  

And finally, yes, a sine curve does make it steeper in the middle of the curve, but it's not a lot. However, it does obviate the problem of grounding that would happen if you relied solely on a flat bone from the top of the access road to the garage floor. What you describe, "a 20m flat bone with some sloping off at top and bottom", is just another way of describing a sine curve!  

It must be 5 years since I did that drawing and I can't recall all the detail, and I'll have to un-archive the original CAD plans!

I've stuck a Post-it on my screen to remind me to check the detail when I get back from my travels.  

On the "pergola" page your plans suggest a minimal length of 2700mm to create a bay of 1830mm.
How have you arrived at this calculation?

What side rail overhang has this allowed?

Why is there a notch cut out of the side rail?

The top of the posts appear to run level with the top of the crossbeams. Is this the case?

Yep!

If so wouldn't leaving 100-150mm of the post projecting above the top of the side rails (page 4) leave a 25-75mm post projection over the top of the crossbeam (using a cross beam of 100mm depth with a 25mm notch cut out).

I'm not sure what you mean by "Page 4" - it's all one page to me, as I don't print out the webpages I write (why would I???) but I think I've found the bit to which you refer....from the full CAD drawing, it seems I have allowed for the "extra over" projection so that it can be sawn off flush with the cross member at the exact level rather than predetermine just how much is 'sticking up' and then finding the side rails are 'higher' than the top of the posts (not that it would matter, as who the hell ever sees the top of a pergola 2.2m up in the air??? ) Maybe I need to clarify that point while I'm fixing the drawings on that page.

On touring many a garden centre i noticed that on a lot of the pergolas built there, the side bars have been slotted into the uprights, having cut out a notch in the tops rather than  attaching to the sides as you suggest.
Is there a reason you don't favour this option or is it just another way of doing it?

And then Mike chipped in with....

I was wondering what was behind the double cross beams in this plan?? Is it just taste?

Basically, yes. That's what folk seemed to like, so that's what I drew.

I should, perhaps, point out that I don't have a pergola in my own garden, so don't quiz me too much on what counts as 'taste' when it comes to garden ornamentation. I have clematis and honeysuckle clinging on to a length of old hosepipe suspended from a couple of 3m high wooden posts - that's real class!  

If you want to see more pictures of my little patch of heaven, have a look at my Garden website.

What about getting two lengths of 4x2 and doubling it? I'm surprised there's no 100x100, though. It's a common enough size for construction work. I'll bet you can get it in Dublin.

So, to answer your questions very quickly (as it's after midnight and I'm shattered)....

1. - Yes - there's a drawing sowhere showing a wall plate.....aaaah! There it is, on the <spit> Decking page.
2. - No - Keep it simple.  
3. - The braces are purely decorative, even in the full version of that pergola. Scrap them if you don't like them.
4. - Adjust away!
5. - To see how to get up the first block, have a look at the Repair & Maintenance page.

How's that? Can I go to bed now??

They'll tell you if it's possible (there are some situations, such as proximity to a junction etc, that render a dropped access crossing undesirable) and they'll tell you how much it will cost for their DLO boys to come around, sup tea and dawdle over the installation.

Some LAs allow you to select your own contractor. This may be a contractor from an 'Approved List' maintained by the council, or any contractor that has the requisite insurance (around 5 million quids), the correct Streetworks Accreditation, and the wherewithal to carry out the work in a professional manner.

Prices vary throughout the country but an average figure woulk be in the region of 500-1,000 quid, or more if there is a lot of footpath to be reinforced.

If you do as planned, and both pin the sleepers vertically (Good luck drilling through 250mm of sleeper wood, by the way!) and then use steel straps to fasten the front face sleepers to the edge timbers, then that should be ok, but make sure your use rustproof screws at least 75mm in length.

You could omit the concrete foundation, but I think it's a mistake to do so, as it's much easier to settle the base sleepers onto a bed of concrete than to get them firmly bedded onto earth, and then you know that the concrete will hold them firm and help spread the loading, as well as providing a good key for the vertical bars.

As mentioned above, I always used 75mm, 100mm orr 150mm screws with sleepers, depending on what we were doing with them. A pilot hole approximately 4mm diameter was used to guide the screw into the timber. 20mm threaded bar can be bought at most decent BMs and it's not the same as rebar - although you could use rebar to form the vertical bars, as the thread isn't vitally important.

When it comes to anchoring the sleepers, if you don't think you could do it all in a day, you could set the base sleepers on the concrete bed, drill through and set the vertical bars, and then leave the rest for another day, as long as you can fairly accurately drill the requisite holes in the right place, and you have a glamorous assistant to help you jiggle the upper-course sleepers onto the protruding bars.

Combined tree-house and drinking platform - Mmm.. that sounds like a really good idea!  

Make sure your starter bars are left protruding by 200mm at least, and leave the surface of the first pour relatively rough so that you get a better 'key', but angle it so that it doesn't hold water during the lay-off.

If it's more than a couple of weeks between pours, you might need to etch the surface of the first pour to ensure good adhesion and get rid of any laitence, but that's the sort of trouble we would normally go to for motorway bridges, not garden ponds!  

Good luck!

Re-grade and regulate involves levelling out what you have and adding to it with a decent quality granular material, such as DTp1. I have a strong mistrust of planings as they tend not to bind and soon allow the potholes and ruts to re-appear. However, they are very cheap and ok for ocassional traffic.

For the blacktop option, you have the reassurance of a surface that should last at least 10 years and won't be washed away or rutted. The existing surface can be re-graded and used as a sub-base, and then a 70mm layer of base laid over the top, for helluva lot less than 45 quid per metre! There's no need for a wearing course on an access track, as you're more interested in serviceability rather than aesthetics.

Invite a couple of contractors around to give you a price. That will give you a clearer indication of what's available at what cost, and then you can decide which is best for you.  

If you're re-grading, it's best to level out everything that's there just now, including the hump, and then top it off with new material. Trying to keep the hump in place results in two strips of new material with a central ridge, which can cause a repeat of the pot-holing and erosion problems.

The easiest way is to plot out the job on a sheet of graph paper, break it down into a series of rectangles and triangles as far as possible and use that to calculate the total area. Of course, if you have a dead fancy CAD system like mine, you simply define an area by clicking on a series of points, and the computer calculates the area for you.  

If it was simply a matter of calculating rectangles, that would be easy to do as a website calculator, but anything beyond that requires sophisticated input to determine points on the perimeter of the area to be paved, and then relies on complex mathematical analysis to breakdown the enclosed area into a series of geometric shapes. I'm a flagger, not a bloody computer programmer!!  

I'm not sure, though, how you've come up with a mere 3 tonnes of aggregates, when you need 4.6 m³ of concrete (15.5x3x0.1) - my calculations suggest you need around 8.5 tonnes of 'ballast' and 1.5 tonnes of cement

The advantage of letting the builder do all the work is that you can sit back and sup a cool beer while they do all the work, safe in the knowledge that they have years of experince that they bring to the job for free.

The fall at the front of the slab is fine. 25mm over half a metre is plenty, but you could increase it to, say 50mm, if you wanted to be extra sure.

As for the construction joints, I really wouldn't bother. Get the builder to order concrete with added fibres, and that will be enough to resist any tensional cracking on this sort of job. If you're planning on using a brick-built structure, or if there'll be any heavy machinery installed in the 'shed', then you might want to consider using rebar, but, for everyday use, poly-fibres will be adequate.

Your slab should be designed by a structural engineer. I can give recommendations and suggestions, but I will not give a specification without seeing full drawings of the planned structure.

A typical 'raft' for this type of project would have 150mm thick keeled toes at the edges, roughly 450mm wide, with a minimum 100mm thick slab. All this would be built over a prepared sub-base with a damp proof membrane, and use fibre-reinforced concrete with a compressive strength of not less than 20N/mm² - that's just a suggestion, of course!  

For a garage, I would suggest that you really do need to dig down to a decent sub-grade and then pour your footing. That may be 600mm or more down, but there's no point pouring a foundation on suspect ground.

You should be able to find contact details for "No Dig" contractors in the Drainage section of your local Yellow Pages.

Other points to consider - will you need frost cover for the water pipes? If laid at a shallow depth, they could freeze, expand and burst if we get another cold winter. A domestic water supply is always laid at a depth of 900mm for this reason.

Lifting and relaying pavers is actually very easy and, if you plan to DIY, then it should be possible to lift a strip of pavers, dig the trench, lay the pipe and  then reinstate the pavings in just a day.

If it were me, I'd install a duct, at least 100mm diameter, and use that to feed through the water service pipes. The advantage of using a duct system is that you can feed through power cables or any other pipes/cables as you need, without having to touch the driveway again.  

There are three other options that may interest you. The first is the simplest, which is to install a dry channel arrangement against the wall(s), as shown on the Dealing with DPCs page. This reduces the amount of excavation required from yourself and is a straightforward, effective solution.

Alternatively, Option B involves reducing the level of the patio so that you create a gap of at least 150mm between the paving surface and the dpc. Obviously, this involves a good bit more digging and waste disposal, but, depending on the exact layout you have there, and the way you'd like the finished patio to look, it could be a viable option.

Finally, there's the 'full monty' option, which involves getting a DPC specialist around to inject a new dpc and then you'd be able to re-use the existing levels, as you like, safe in the knowledge that your house is fully damp-proofed and your bank account is empty.

If it were me - it'd be Option 1 and in the pub by dinner time!  

Any good sub-base material should be satisfactory, as they allow reasonably free passage of groundwater. I'd be wary about using a limestone, as that could cause leaching of soluble calcium carbonate through the sleepers, which might begin to look unsightly after a few years, but any other inert material would be fine.

Putting a spadeful of concrete in the base of the hole is fine and something we've always done to ensure the post doesn't 'settle', however unlikely it may seem when you consider all the surround concrete. However, sticking in a couple of rebar off-cuts (for those who don't know, rebar is steel reinforcing bars, usually 12-25mm in diameter) is, IMHO, going over the top, and I'd be concerned that the rebar wouldn't always have the minimum 50mm of concrete cover that's needed to protect it from aggressive groundwater. If, for some reason, there's insufficient cover of the rebar, then it will start to rust, which results in a volume expansion, leading to concrete cracking. It may be that the rebar penetrates the concrete pad and is in direct contact with the ground beneath, or it my 'fall over' during backfilling and again be exposed to groundwater which could, possibly, lead to rusting and subsequent cracking of the concrete.

I have a similar-themed problem with the cutting-down of the concrete posts. These post contain a token gesture of 6mm mild steel rebar and if they are sliced and the steel exposed to the atmosphere, then we have the problem of rusting and concrete cracking once again. If the sliced end was fed into the hole and then completely encased in concrete, that would be acceptable, but having the sliced end at the top, as it were, is a bit naughty.

Most of the fencing contractors with whom I've worked rely on digging an over-deep hole, placing a shovelfull or two of concrete at the bottom to enable the whole post to sit at just the right level, and then, as soon as alignment is confirmed, backfill with concrete immediately, so that there is no construction joint between the pad concrete at the base of the hole and the surround concrete.

When it comes to bracing the posts for the first 24 hours or so while the concrete hardens, you can use almost anything - no need to use 4x2 specifically. If the gravel boards are fitted as the posts are placed, then they tend to ensure verticality and alignment on the posts in the longitudinal section (along the fence line) so all you need to worry about is the transverse section (across the fenceline) and any two sticks lashed either side of the post and held fairly firmly by the ground will do.

On larger jobs, we've used 2m lengths of rebar at 46-60 degrees to the posts, with one end driven into the ground and then a cable tie or steel tie-wire to lash t'other end to the post. A day later, we go along and strike the bracing, throw it on the back of the wagon and use it again on countless other jobs.

You could use 2x2, pipe-spacers or any other bits and bats you have lying about. As long as they are reasonably firm and strong enough to support a post in a light breeze, that's all that matters.

A dry or semi-dry mix is standard for fencing erection. I know some folks like to make a meal of it and use a 75mm slump concrete, or put the hose onto the hole once it's backfilled with the dry/semi-dry mix, but there really is no need. There's usually sufficient moisture in the concrete and the surrounding ground to initiate hydration/curing, and it's not as though you need a concrete that's rock hard - as long as it's firm, and holds the post steady, that's all that's required.

You probably know for yourself all the problems that happen with large volumes of concrete knocked-up on site - no two batches are the same: they've either got variable cement content or variable water content, but the end result is a patchy concrete and a saving of around 5 quid a cube.

If you buy from a Ready-mix plant, preferably one of the QSRMC accredited plants, then you get consistency of material, easy placing (squirting it in from the back of the wagon), the opportunity to incorporate useful additives, such as crack-reducing fibres, retarders, etc, and, most importantly of all, a guaranteed quality. Then, if owt does go wrong with the concrete, it's not going to damage your pocket as the Ready-mix supplier would be responsible (assuming you hadn't ballsed-up the placement or addded extra water, etc).

An RC40 mix is identical to the C40 mix detailed on the Concrete Mixes page but with added reinforcement. Do yourself a favour and buy-in Ready mix!

1. - keep at least a metre away from the fence, preferably 2 metres, However, if you're installing temporary shoring as the dig progresses, you can get to within half-a-metre.
2. - Theodolite is the word you're looking for, or an automatic level at least! Whether your contractor chooses to use one is their decision but you need to determine whether the price they state is a firm quotation regardless of the actual volume that has to be shifted, or whether it's one of those estimates that have a way of doubling once the work is underway.
3. - The drainage probably will be an issue and I'd look at installing a land drain or composite panel at the rear of the retainer wall to deal with the inevitable inflow from the higher ground. Any contractor that doesn't mention this is probably best avoided.

The old concrete needs to be 'etched' which involves washing it down with hydrochloric acid to ensure you have a clean, laitence-free surface. Then, the surface should be primed with SBR and the grano screeded over the lot before the SBR dries. All these complicated sounding building materials are readily available from a decent Builders' Merchant, and possibly from Travis Bloody Perkins, too!  ;)

The grano mix is described on the Mortars page and details on the coverage rate for SBR and Acid Etching Fluid is given on the containers (from memory, it's around 4m² per litre, so you'd need at least 25 litres)

You can lay flags/slabs on concrete, if you wish.