The Brew Cabin

I've excavated the soil from the site where I am going to lay brickweave. In doing so I have exposed the top of a 4 inch bore plastic pipe used to take waste to the main sewer. The pipe disappears underground and I estimate has a max depth at this grade of 2 ftt. How do I go about protecting the pipe from damage during subsequent operations and do I have to take precautions for the buried section of the pipe?

Why have you emailed the very same question, despite the instruction not to do so? Do you think you'll get a quicker answer if you choke up my inbox? :angry:

Your exposed pipe needs concreting-in. If it's uPVC, then it's way too shallow to be adequately protected. See the drainage section for info on concrete haunching for pipework.

Tony,
I've been thru hell this week excavating the soil around the plastic pipe but I've managed to concrete it and we are all pretty happy.
I've plonked in 16.4tonnes of hardcore and roughly spread it I've got to wack it and then level. Have you any tips on this -I have to be fit enough to get my pension on Thursday!
The next step is the surrounding soldiers but I am confused do I lay them in a lean 10:1 mix or a sand/gravel/cement mix?
Is there a rule of thumb that will tell me what quantity of dry ingredient I need to give a finished thickness with the finished mix?
Then to the sand layer. We are looking for a finished bed of about 50mm but the information sheets talk about allowing for compaction.I am not sure how much sand to oreder. The site is 76 sq. m and if I calculate for 50mm I need 6Te;60mm7.5Te;65mm8Te.If I am out with this figure I will have a tonne or so to get rid of somehow. And if I'm short I won't reach the soldier level. Any advise on this?
When it commes to the final wacking do I just wack away until everything is level or until the setts will go down no more?
I see everyone has already told -a great site you should publish the book.
Sorry for being so thick about things.
Regards mozza

At least your job isn't flooded - lots of my email correspondents are complaining of being underwater this weekend!

Spreading the sub-base - use a rake to get it roughly level, then consolidate it with the wacker plate and check the level with taut string lines. You're looking for +/- 15mm It's worth spending a bit of time getting the sub-base right, as it has a major bearing on the long-term looks of the finished driveway.

Lay the soldiers on a lean mix concrete, roughly 6parts gravel to 3 parts sand to 1 part cement. There's a calculator on the Concretes page to help you work out just what you need, if you know the quantity of concrete required. You can work this out quite easily - multiply total length of soldier edging, by (width +100mm) by 100mm thickness. This gives the bedding, and for the haunching, it's length X 100mm X 50mm. If you have Excel on your computer, there's a spreadsheet you can download that works it all out for you. :)

For the laying course, the calculator I provide is set up to calculate the volume/tonnage of sand required to give a compacted thickness of approximately 50mm, so, you should need something like 7.5T - order 8T and any surplus can be used for knocking up concrete.

Wackering - you'll find that the blocks go down so far and no further. It usually takes 4-6 passes of the plate and then the damn thing starts bouncing around like billy-o. It's time to stop if that starts happening! :)

I'd love to publish a book version of the site, but I can't get any publishers to make me a sensible offer. They either want me to pay for the privilege (and we're talking a 5 figure sum!!!) or they want to stick a certain so-called TV-celebrity's grinning fizzog on the front and pass it off as his work. Over my dead body!