- How to build a shed base out of paving slabs
- Mix sand and cement together to make mortar or use a pre-mixed one
- Use a trowel to lay mortar for 1 slab at a time on the sub-base and lift a damp-sided slab onto the mortar, using a piece of timber and club hammer to tap the slab into position carefully. Continue to lay the first row of slabs
- Make equally-sized spacers in all the joints in the slabs to ensure they’re the same size, checking it’s level as you go along
- Next lay slabs along the two adjacent outer edges, filling in the central area row by row
- Leave the mortar to set according to the instructions or for at least 48 hours before filling in the joints with mortar or paving grout
- Building a shed base from concrete
- Create a wooden frame around your shed base area (also called formwork) to stop the concrete from spreading
- Mix pre-mixed concrete with water or use 1 part cement to 5 parts ballast
- Wet the sub-base using a watering can with a rose on the end
- Pour the concrete onto the framed base starting in one corner
- Push the blade of a shovel up and down in the edges of the concrete to get rid of air bubbles
- Use a rake to spread the concrete, leaving it around 18mm higher than the top of the frame. Work in sections of around 1-1.m2
- Compact the concrete using a straight piece of timber that’s longer than the width of the base. Move the timber along the site, hitting it along at about half of its thickness at a time until the surface is evenly ridged
- Remove excess concrete and level the surface by sliding the timber back and forwards from the edge that you started. Fill in any depressions and repeat until even
- Run an edging trowel along the frame to round off exposed edges of the concrete and prevent chipping
- Cover the concrete with a plastic sheet raised on wooden supports to allow slow drying. Weigh it down with bricks
- Once the concrete is set, you can install your shed and remove the wooden frame with a crowbar
Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birth place of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, many of whose books are embeded in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has an extremely rich historical landscape, the site of many Iron Age brochs as well as a very early middle ages monastic site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological study, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote: "These tiny straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate elegance. In boyhood we are familiar with every square backyard of it. We incorporate it literally and also our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout and also a sometimes noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken as well as disappearing rabbit scuts, a wealth of wild blossom as well as little bird life, the rising hawk, the unanticipated roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the individual who as soon as lived much inland in straths as well as hollows, the past and the present held in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is a community museum/landscape analysis centre at the old town institution.
