Andy Dingley wrote:
The concrete floor in my new (but old) workshop used to have baker's
ovens bolted down to it, and they've left holes. In a room 15' x 25',
there's about 6' square to fill, mostly in two large holes around 2"
deep.

So what's my best option for some sort of screed to fill these in?
Buy something (brandnames?) or mix it myself (proportions?)? What's
the best technique for getting a reasonable flat finish afterwards.

The finished surface will have woodworking machinery in there, so the
floor wil see "workshop" use, but I'm not going to be rolling steel-
wheeled engine cranes or such across it all too often. It will be
painted overall afterwards, but I can't afford epoxy.

An ordinary concrete mix will do fine. You can buy ready mixed aggregate and
adding cement in a ratio of 1 to 6 will give you a medium strength mix which
should be ok for a workshop floor. You'll be surprised how much you'll need
though. About 0.2 cubic metres or 400kg of materials by my calculations.
Slap it in and smooth over with a straight plank then you can run a float
over it before it sets if you want the surface to be very smooth.


I also need to trench something in to provide power feeds for a couple
of centrally located machines. Any suggestions on how best to cable
this? Trench with lid, or just bury a pipe with a drawrope and leave a
big open access box at each end?

It'd be much easier to run the cable round the walls and across the roof and
then down than go digging holes for it. You don't bollox an otherwise good
floor just to get power feeds in to machines which may want to move at a
later date anyway.
--
Dave Baker