On 26 Sep 2004 Adrian wrote:

As the timber single garage we currently have is rather past tense, I'm
currently thinking about alternatives.

The whole thing is fairly knackered ...

One thing that I think I'm going to have to do is increase the size of the
concrete base - the current garage seems to measure about 3100mm wide, but
the new ones all seem to be 3400mm. Is slapping a 300mm wide strip of
concrete to the side of the existing slab an option, or do I have to
consider replacing the whole bloody lot? eeeek

Depends what the existing floor is like. If you add a strip make sure
you excavate the ground first and put in a layer of hard core (rubble,
not porn). If you join the new concrete onto the old you can be sure
that a crack will appear sooner or later, so I'd be inclined to leave a
gap by inserting a piece of wood and then fill with bitumen. It would
be nicer to replace the WBL.

Final question - Power! To my mind, it seems easiest to take power down
some external conduit to the garage - it'd be easy to take the feed from
fusebox (MCB, but I just can't bear to call it a "consumer unit"..) out,
and along several external walls fairly unobtrusively. Feasible? Or do I
have to bury the soddin' thing underground - which is going to involve
lifting a lot of brick paving.

I've wired up my workshop which is a precast concrete building. I've
used 2 x 4mm² armoured cable running from a separate 30 amp fuse in the
consumer unit to a small consumer unit in the workshop. The latter has a
5amp fuse for the lighting and a 15 amp fuse for power. There's an
additional earth rod for the workshop. Currently the armoured cable is on
the surface beside a fence though I had intended to bury it under the
driveway which is block paving on sand. There was sufficient spare
cable to provide an expansion loop. The run is about 30m.

Armoured cable is not much more expensive than ordinary cable plus
conduit (around £1 per metre plus the glands and clips) but it is much
more satisfactory. Steel conduit or heavy gauge pvc fixed to the wall
would be OK.

--
Richard Porter
Mail to username ricp at domain minijem.plus.com
"You can't have Windows without pains."