Scirocco Register

Thought i would make abit of a thread for my new garden, drive and garage build. Once its done, the plan is to move my Rocco here so I can play with it at my leisure. Also - you gotta have your own decent man-space and somewhere nice to have a BBQ and entertain guests!!

You'll be happy to know, Its progressing alot faster than my car build which is good.

Its been on the to-do list for a while, i've wanted to build a new garage and generally tidy the place up for a couple of reasons.
1: The Driveway is shocking, it is usable to get the bins out and stuff but isnt wide enough to get a car up it due to the hugely overgrown privet hedge
2: The current garage is ready to fall down (and its filled with junk). its 5x3m so again, not wide enough to put my car in. Also its not really in the best position, i would like it to be at the back of the garden rather than in the middle.
3: my garden is set on 2 levels, the front/drive is one height, and then the back section is about 5ft higher. I got a load of stone so also wanted to build a retaining wall and some steps up to my greenhouse.

Before I got started I had been in discussions with the next door neighbours and told them that I was going to pull the hedge out so I could widen the drive. After a couple of months worth of discussions about boundarys, style, size of the fence, costs, we found an agreement which suited us both. My side of the bargain was to remove the hedge, set the boundary and basically tidy everything up – theres was to pay for putting the new fence in. I thought it was quite a good deal, quite alot of work but it saved me a load of money. I removed the hedge towards the end of last year, and the fence was put in and am now on with doing the rest of it.

Here is how it was before, you can see the garage, drive, pile of stones i want to build my wall with and the general mess it is...







So I started cutting it down by hand, and after 2 days of doing that i gave up and went and got a chainsaw which made it easier, but was still a hell of a job! The hedge was 30m long, 8ft thick and about 15ft tall. it took 4 days in total to get it out!!





Nice fire to burn it all... you gotta love a big bonfire!!


You can nicely see the boundary line on this picture – and see how much space the hedge had taken up..


then my mate came down with a mini digger and we got the roots out and removed about 15 tonnes of soil. I'd asked a mate who has a farm if i could dump it there and he was ok with it, we loaded 2 tractor/trailor loads up and off it went. all the roots and stumps went to the tip!



And this is how it ended up.... its now a good 5ft wider for the full length of the garden and gives me nearly double the width on the drive. You can now see how much space the hedge took up - it was out of control!!





So happy with it now. its lighter, neater and generally a huge improvement. The Land rover garage paid for the new fence to be put in, which you will be able to see on the next load of photos.

Next job – remove all the stone out of the back garden and build a wall with it, and knock the garage down.

So this is the garage... and me ready to break it to bits! but we will hold on abit before it get broken up.. You can see the fence that was put in in the following pics too



I built my wall with all the stone over the bank holiday weekend we just had, it wasnt too much of a hastle, the hardest part was moving them - some of them are well over 100kgs. My stone came from my uncle who had knocked down this old farmhouse. I got all the old window sills, lintels, and the fireplace. Its really nice stone actually, and i think with it being chunky its given the back a lot more character and could have been made 50 years ago.

I hired a digger over this weekend just gone, and after lifting all flags up which made my back garden I started digging out where my new garage would be going. I estimate there was about 10tonnes of soil we took out - none of this got taken away, i spread it over the upper garden, and saved quite abit to drag forward and fill the hole where the old garage was.



I didnt actually smash the garage up with the pick-axe, i drove the digger into it! hahaha... it was much more rewarding, plus with it being asbestos I didnt fancy being inside it smashing it up.. all the asbestos got taken away to the tip and i saved the wood to burn over the winter.

Garage flattened!


cleaned up...


alot of the old flags and some of the huge pile of bricks i had got smashed up and put in the hole to create the foundations for the new garage.






As we stand, I've got some more crushed stone to put on - the flags and bricks alone wont do it, then level it all properly and wacker it solid, I need to make some shuttering up, then I will order the concrete for the base.

The garage will be a timber framed one, 6m long by 5.5m wide. This should be plently big enough to put the Scirocco in, have a nice big workbench, and a decent storage area.

Created a much better space overall, and is coming along nicely.

Great job! Makes me want to hire a digger too. Must have been great smashing things

Awesome mate :)

but have you checked with the new fence you can get the w-i-d-e rocco through!!!!

Its most fun yeah, you need a good weekend to get the hang of it but its not really that hard to do.
I would recommend it to anybody!

And yes - its fat ass just about squeezes though..

Continued with the garage last night, before i shifted anymore of the loose crushed stone (currently i’ve moved about half of it) i have I wanted to get the shuttering done for the concrete base. With the sides being 6m wide i needed to string line it and not just use wood. I tried setting the string line using a spirit level but it was a pain and wasnt particularly accurate either..

After having a chat to some people, a great tip they gave me is to use a hose pipe and fill it full with water. Hammer your first peg in roughly where you want the corner and mark your Floor height / top of the concrete on the stick. You hold one end of the hose at this corner (your start/reference point) and the other at the other place you want levelled. As you raise/lower one end of the hose, water comes out of one of the end depending which is lower until you find the level where both ends are the same height. You need to keep topping up the hose with water as it does spill out until you get it set but after a minute or 2 you find its accurate within a couple of mm’s.

Hammer a Peg in, mark your line on the peg, and move on to the remaining corners and repeat. Make sure you level everything to your first peg (start/reference point) to ensure you dont add any errors into the measurements.



Once I had set the corners, i made up my shuttering using 6x1” timber. You prob can use ply, chipboard, or anything else but this is what i chose.

Then string line it from corner to corner and that gives you a nice straight and horizontal line to put your shutteriung up to. I got the front side done and fixed in place but then it was tea time and I couldnt be bothered going back out as it was 9pm.





This weekend I will finish the shuttering, put the rest of the stone in and wacker it all solid.

Picture of the finished wall.

Are you planning to have a slight incline to get into the garage?

Don't want it flooded.

Alternatively, a small trench with a grating over it in front of the door will do the trick as well.

Yes, I am thinking I will need to make a small ramp to get in. expecting the base to be about 4" higher than the grass/path surrounding it. you cant really tell from the pics but it will be higher.
Defo dont want it flooding though no....

Nothing like a bit of demolition! Nice job!

Got what I wanted to do done over the weekend. Got the shuttering done, the remaining stone in, and wackered it all flat.

I forgot though that I havent put any pipework in so i can route the electric cable through the concrete. So I need to sort that.





Still need to source some re-enforcing steel then the I will ordr the concrete.... worked out I need 3.5m3 of concrete so just trying to find who’s cheapest. I might get 4m3 just to be safe – dont want to end up short, plus I am sure if I prep an area now I will be able to use it up..

Looks a cracking job, good size.

Top work sir.

I'm well impressed, appreciate the shear work involved having done flooring in a section of my workshop and the amount of trees down at our farm.

I'm no expert and probably watched too many shed heads on Sky tv for my own good but have you got the right thickness of concrete/mix figured out? clearly steel structure in the mix will reinforce the mix, just concerned you have the right strength to accommodate the weight of an average Rocco . Also would there be a heavy duty vapour barrier going under the mix to ensure a dry flooring/interior? I stress I am no expert just seen stuff like this and got advise with my own bit of flooring which where I actually used recycled bricks. You may well have figured all this out

Love this kind of project, inspiring stuff

Should only need the base to be approx 100mm thick with the steel set halfway in.
Well jealous at how much space you will have.

Thanks for the comments guys.

I hadnt thought about vapour barrier no, but i will defo look into it - i presume you just put this on top of your hardcore before you concrete it?

After more research I have found there is this stuff called Fibre-crete. Its your usual concrete but with fibreglass wadding mixed into it. Apparently its sronger than the Steel Re-enforced stuff and only £10 per m3 more. So i am going to go for that.... Tbh, I am not concerned with the floor really, I dug down to solid clay, then put about 5" of hardcore in (bricks and slabs), then sandy gravel, then 4tonnes of loose gravel. With the concrete the base should be about 10" thick so I am fairly confident it will hold up.