Builders?

A global place for general discussion (Volvo, V3M or non-Volvo related topics).
Please introduce yourself here, your Volvo 300 hobby...
NO technical support, parts requests or car advertisements here
User avatar
jtbo
Posts: 5805
Joined: 23 Jul 2004 03:50 am
Location: Finland, middle of nowhere
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by jtbo » 03 Oct 2009 10:06 am

Prices are now cheaper and constructors readily available because of f*cked economy, it has not shown up in my line of work however so things look nice :lol:
Volvo 360GL -88 -under restoration-
Volvo 343DL vario -81 -running- Image
Volvo 240 Diesel -83 -undecided-
Citroen ZX Dturbo -97 -daily- ImageImage

User avatar
Speedy88
Posts: 4057
Joined: 04 May 2009 11:52 pm
Location: Bristol

Re: Builders?

Post by Speedy88 » 03 Oct 2009 01:43 pm

Sauna looks great. Just in time for the winter. Absolute heaven in there, then a mad dash barefoot accross the snow back to the house :lol:
'88 340 Williams (Sold)
'85 360 GLS - Drift project (Sold)
'77 Colt Sigma
'96 940 Drift project

User avatar
jtbo
Posts: 5805
Joined: 23 Jul 2004 03:50 am
Location: Finland, middle of nowhere
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by jtbo » 03 Oct 2009 10:52 pm

It is tradition to 'swim' in snow after the sauna (fully naked of course), helps with blood circulation :mrgreen:
Volvo 360GL -88 -under restoration-
Volvo 343DL vario -81 -running- Image
Volvo 240 Diesel -83 -undecided-
Citroen ZX Dturbo -97 -daily- ImageImage

User avatar
Fuse
Posts: 1364
Joined: 29 Jul 2004 09:03 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by Fuse » 19 Oct 2010 12:50 am

Hello,

I had 1 week of vacation during the summer. What's the better way to spend it than do some building.. :D

The summerhouse is built at -49, soon after the Continuation War had ended. It's the house where my father lived through his childhood. There was shortage of everything back then. What I've heard there was six bags of concrete available, which was just enough to cover the baking oven and chimney with some serious usage of clay and rocks as filling.

So there are couple corners of the house which require some maintainance on the foundation after +50 years with no ground frost insulation or underground drains at all.

Something is missing here. Could it be a foundation pillar.. Back then they really did know how to build houses, because even though one of the natural rock foundations under the house corner has collapsed, it doesn't have pretty much any affect on to the house it self.

Image

At this point I had already removed the old crumbled rock foundation beneath the house corner and dug the ground open beneath.

These rocks had been supportting the corner last time at probably ~15 years ago. After that those had crumbled.

Image
Image

I didn't get an excavator on the site fitting the timetable I had so I removed those rocks by hand. :D Quite a job even though a proper leverage is usefull.

Time to get some building materials.

Image

Enter the steel reinforced concrete and proper land fillings. 8)

Image
Image
Image
Image

The ~5cm gap between the pillar and house is meant to be there, as when the concrete has dryed, the building's corner is going to be lifted few centimeters with 2x 30 tonnes jacks and a concrete piece is going to be placed between the pillar and the corner.

I also dug 7 meters of underground drainage from that corner to the nearest ditch by shovel.. ground is rock solid clay with small rocks.. No need to be going to the gym after that. :D
Volvo R-Sport - Equipment for the car enthusiast.

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -Ernest Hemingway

magnumpi
Posts: 1289
Joined: 05 Feb 2008 11:39 pm
Location: Surrey

Re: Builders?

Post by magnumpi » 19 Oct 2010 07:06 pm

Can you please stop posting stuff like this, futher instiling how rubbish the UK is and how poor i am :( :lol:

Hopw come everything is built on stilts? Is it so when it snows heavily you step into it rather than climbing up onto it if that makes sense? Or something else entirely.
89 3dr 340DL in Battleship grey with Ultralights and Williams power
Whats the matter with the car i'm driving can't you tell that it's out of style?

User avatar
Fuse
Posts: 1364
Joined: 29 Jul 2004 09:03 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by Fuse » 19 Oct 2010 07:30 pm

Sorry. :D

It's not that common that buildings here are built on stilts. The house it self is built on stilts because of the reason I mentioned earlier. There was shortage of everything after the war so house was built on natural "rock stilts" mostly, because there was no concrete to build full solid plinth under the house. Most buildings have normal full width plinth or concrete floor slab under.

Sauna was build on pillars because that was the easiest way considering the location (Not easily accesible with concrete trucks etc...) Pillars don't need as much concrete as a full concrete floor slab or plinth, so when concrete was mixed on site, the pillar foundation was the most convinient.
Volvo R-Sport - Equipment for the car enthusiast.

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -Ernest Hemingway

User avatar
jtbo
Posts: 5805
Joined: 23 Jul 2004 03:50 am
Location: Finland, middle of nowhere
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by jtbo » 24 Oct 2010 02:12 pm

I built a house (for three cats), will sell plans cheap :lol:
Image
Volvo 360GL -88 -under restoration-
Volvo 343DL vario -81 -running- Image
Volvo 240 Diesel -83 -undecided-
Citroen ZX Dturbo -97 -daily- ImageImage

User avatar
Fuse
Posts: 1364
Joined: 29 Jul 2004 09:03 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by Fuse » 25 Aug 2011 02:09 am

Long time no seen. :)

I've not updated the GLT-topic at the Accessories and tuning -section for few days as I've been at the summer house since the last friday. I took the 240 and drove ~500km to our summer house to do some similiar repair jobs as last year. :D

There was one more corner which was pretty much in the air. Reasons for this are stated at the previous posts.

I started with a shovel, moved one rock a bit which had been a foundation rock at the last time sometimes in the 70's probably. After that the ground frost had been moving the rocks and the corner had sunk quite a bit. Luckily the frame of the building is built in such way, that it doesn't collapse and it can be lifted to it's original height if wanted.

Image

After this I found a rock beneath that rock which had dimensions of about 1,5m x 1m and I called one guy I know who runs an earthmoving company and he visited the site with a mini excavator. Very nice machines, swift to manuver, rubber tracks so it doesn't mess up the whole yard etc... but still a hell of a alot power for it's size.

So he dug underground drains for that corner and removed enough of the clay-type of a ground material which is a very vulnerable soil to ground frost.

Image
Image
Image

After this he delivered some two to three cubic meters of gravel soil which is not vulnerable to ground frost and I carted this gravel on to the dug out corner. Then I built some cast molds and cast a steel reinforced concrete foundation base for the new foundation.

Unfinished cast.

Image

Next I casted some pillar type of a structure above the foundation. The corner will be lifted a bit with couple of 30 tonne bottle jacks and a new sill will be placed between the newly cast pillar/foundation structure.

Image

It has been a very nice weather for such a late summer time. Last year at this time it was raining and cold.. Now it's been +20C and like this for the whole week. 8)

Image
Image
Volvo R-Sport - Equipment for the car enthusiast.

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -Ernest Hemingway

User avatar
Fuse
Posts: 1364
Joined: 29 Jul 2004 09:03 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by Fuse » 01 Jul 2012 01:56 am

Built an extension of a terrace for the sauna at mid summer day. :P

Image
Image
Image


The main building at the summer house is going to get a new roof at august. I bought 13 rolls of roofing felt, an air compressor, a felt nail gun, 7000 nails and 32 meter of eaves protector.

I put 8 rolls of felt in the trunk of the S90, nivomats seem to be working fine as one roll weights ~30kg and there were four adults seated. :P No problems...
Volvo R-Sport - Equipment for the car enthusiast.

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -Ernest Hemingway

User avatar
Fuse
Posts: 1364
Joined: 29 Jul 2004 09:03 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by Fuse » 19 Aug 2012 10:53 pm

New roof for the summer house. :P

The old one was a textile based asphalt roofing felt, layed on the original wood shingle roof from the 40's. The old roofing felt was probably put on at late 60's. To put it lightly the old roofing felt was in a quite bad shape... Old wood shingle roof under had saved the building from any major damages. Both of the lower eaves were quite rotten, as the water leaking through the old roofing felt had stopped there. The original shingle roof under the felt was in great shape, minus the eaves.

I chose a modern bitumen based and fibre reinforced roofing felt laid on a similiar way as the old roofing, as it's quite easy and cost effective if you don't count in your own work. ;) Many people would argue against and would say that a steel roofing is the only way, but the cost and labour of a well built steel roofing for an old building is something else than with a modern roofing felt. Also the building isn't exactly laser straight on every corner, so if I'd have chose the steel roofing, I would've had to straighten the roof and that would've taken a lot more of my time than I currently have to spare. :P Also I like the look of a well built felt roof if the rest of the building is also ~60's style.

Few pics.

Ant's nest at the old rotten eaves boards under the roofing felt.

Image

But there's nothing a good old hand held circular saw won't solve. Bit of cutting and all the rotten wood was gone.

Image

Of course those cut out parts had to be replaced with new wood.

Image

I also installed steel eaves protectors at the same time. The bitumen roofing will be glued on to the eaves protectors with bitumen glue.

Image

New roofing felts

Image

This kind of a traditional roofing felt setup needs a lot of (about 4000 on a roof this size) roofing nails.. As we have modern tools nowadays I bought a pressure nail gun to do the job. :P

Image

I started to work on the roof at 11th of this month and finished the job at this morning. :P A bit tight schedule as I had to drive ~500km back home today as my vacation ends today. :D Well I got it done in time. I originally planned to rebuild the chimney on the roof also but as the eaves were quite rotten and required a rebuild, it didn't leave me time to rebuild the chimney. Well, some work left for next summer.. :D

Image

It's a first roof I've ever built so I'm quite satisfied with the result. :P
Volvo R-Sport - Equipment for the car enthusiast.

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -Ernest Hemingway

User avatar
jtbo
Posts: 5805
Joined: 23 Jul 2004 03:50 am
Location: Finland, middle of nowhere
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by jtbo » 22 Aug 2012 09:00 am

Looks familiar Fuse, I just used electric chainsaw :D

Image

Chimney had also cracked because there was no hat for chimney, which is really simple to make by yourself too.

Image

So from chimney to edge of roof we cut everything out between those two support beams, then cleaned chimney from loose material, also took surface coating out from chimney at sauna and repaired cracks + put new coating to chimney, then some wooden board, planks etc to fill hole that we cut and after that we put tarpaulins over roof and nailed some boards to keep them at place, maybe next summer we build new roof as it must be done, but total costs are few thousand for this big roof.
Volvo 360GL -88 -under restoration-
Volvo 343DL vario -81 -running- Image
Volvo 240 Diesel -83 -undecided-
Citroen ZX Dturbo -97 -daily- ImageImage

User avatar
Fuse
Posts: 1364
Joined: 29 Jul 2004 09:03 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Builders?

Post by Fuse » 25 Aug 2013 12:37 am

Update here also. :-P

I've been quite busy with my work but I did have some time to visit the summer house also at this summer. And I did build an actual tool shed this time! :D It still needs some work like a door and such but the main frame is up. The reason I'm building a new toolshed is because there's a full log construction granary from early 1900s whichs is a too nice building to be used as a storage house, so I'll be using the new smaller toolshed to store all the tools and such. :-P Granary will be converted to a guest room or similiar.

Started with a shovel.

Image
Image

Heated the sauna while at it. :-P

Image

And needed some timber product.

Image

The base frame

Image
Image

Walls.

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image


I did have some time to enjoy the scenery with a cold beer also. 8)

Image
Image


-Marko
Volvo R-Sport - Equipment for the car enthusiast.

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." -Ernest Hemingway

Post Reply