We started work on our new unit yesterday, its by no means perfect but it is free and has loads of space, and a pit.
the flooring in the main workshop (pit is next door) is our main problem at the min, its very soft loose sandy soil,
we are trying to do this as cheap as possible so i am thinking concrete is out of the question, the workshop is 32ft x 16ft (10m x 5m) so a 100mm fill would be 5 cube, but 200mm would be best (according to google) so thats 10 cube,
what sort of money are you looking at per cube?
also if we wanted to fit a 2 poster lift, how deep do you need the footings?
would we need to put any hardcore down below or would we get away with wackering the soil?
the other option is just to put a few tonne of hardcore down, wack it flat, ive been told you can get stuff with a lot of lime in it that becomes fairly solid when wetted. and then just put some big sheets of inch thick ply down the centre for jacking up off.
any ideas?

 

nobody?

 

anyone tonight?

 

you really need to concrete it mate ,its the only solution to work and jack your cars safely .
firstly you should remove the soft sandy soil and get down to the subsoil roughly down 6 inches replace this soil with 8 inches of hardcore which will need to be compacted with a whacker plate.you will need 6 inches of concrete under the liftand will probably get away with 4-5inches over the rest of the floor ,it would be best to use a 383 mesh aswell to give your floor some extra strenght and to stop it cracking.
unfortunatley it costs to do it right but rest assured it will serve you well.

cheers james

 

as above there really is no point in cutting corners,if your using a lift you really need a solid base dont want anyone getting hurt,doing it the correct way will always cost but you'll only do it once.on a simillar note a friend of mine has a road around the back of his house thats broken up tarmac,he asked my to price it up to concrete it,because he wasnt willing to pay to much to do the job he told me he was just going to keep spreading dolly on it, 3 years later hes still spreading dolly,its cost him a small fortune and alot of work over the 3 years, he really shud of spent the money doing the job right the first time round

 

iirc last time i poured concrete i paid £495 for 9 cubic meters it can be gotten cheaper i understand but as its not my main trade i tend to pay a little more for it tbh if i do remember correctly it was about £360 for 13 tonnes of balast and a palete of cement plus a whole days knocking it up so was better off getting it poured tbh for a high traffic workshop area iwould do exsactly james said 100% but if you want it to be really hard use an agitator wand/roller ect then power float it makes it so strong and easy to move a jack around i recently had to cut a channel it an agitated floor for a shower trap/waste for an garage-annex conversion and it was so hard probably the toughest thing ive ever had to cut/kango it was like granite lol

but all james said i would agree with

Ben