And since we were talking about upcoming projects beside the basement earlier.
There is one thing on the "honey do list" that I've kept postponing for several years by now. My sweetie want's a wooden patio.
The issue with that is, that everything has to be transported over a small, dirt track that leads around all the houses, we're the last one connected to this "road". I've done it once with soil, by hand with a wheelbarrow to fill up a pool we demolished - NEVER again. Now I could put some board through the living room and entry hall, go through the house with the stuff - but thats getting old fast, as well - as it's not much difference in terms of the length of the way.
And demolishing the old patio, transporting & dumping the stuff, then transporting materials for the new patio ... All over that dirt track. That is not for me anymore.
So I always said, half jokingly, I'll do it when I get one of these small track dumpers:
https://www.wackerneuson.de/en/products/dumpers/track-dumpers/
A couple of weeks ago, we were going back and forth about it again, and she said, well, if you want, we could buy one of these.
At the same time an acquaintance was busy doing his patio remodel, which I didn't know. He posted about it, and I nearly couldn't believe my eyes when I read his post - he was using concrete anchors/concrete bolts to fix his substructure to his old tiled patio.
Now the problem is, I haven't build our current patio - I have no idea what really is underneath the the natural stone tiles. But I liked the idea enough to give it some more thoughts.
Main problem, though the patio is roofed and the soil underneath dry, it's still outdoors. So one should account for wood to be working/shrinking/expanding/moving depending on season/weather. That makes using really small gaps between the boards a problem. But it's the only way we would want it - if the gaps had to be larger, and you you could see the old patio underneath, it's not worth the time and effort for us.
Anyway, since I would have to find out if the old patio can cope with the concrete anchors/ concrete bolts (These are screw in, no injection/plug necessary) and a wooden substructure fixed to it - aka will it hold up? I need to make a test and evaluate.
So I contacted the screw/bolt manufacturer Heco about their anchors and asked for some samples. They were more than happy to send me some, these arrived today. (The same type my acquaintance used.) I got different types, ultimately I will only be needing the countersunk head ones, but they have these samples pre-packaged, so I got quite some more. Not exactly unhappy about it, it's always interesting and good to have some samples lying around.
The good news is, if this works on our old patio, installing a new one will be a breeze - maybe using some WPC (stabilized/ composite "wood" material) style product to be sure we get the "zero gap" without fears of wood working/shrinking/expanding/moving. Even though we would prefer real wood.
The bad news, I/we probably won't be getting a track dumpster. Which I would have loved to get. ( Probably more than the actual wooden patio [tongue] [big grin] )
Kind regards,
Oliver
