More sleeper work today.

So yesterdays sleeper beds were all finished easily enough, although this morning I had more aches and pains than usual. So this morning was spent doing a few more jobs in the area. I installed 3 sleepers along the one edge to retain what will be a bark mulch surface. The installation of these were basically no different to the beds we had built. Each sleeper was secured with a post at each end and one in the middle, all these were concreted into the ground. We usually use bagged postcrete for these now, as the extra price is justified due to the setting time being less than 10 minutes. Standard concrete will still be drying the next day, so it makes the whole process a lot easier.

We then made a start on the aluminium edging which is used for the rest of the bark mulch area. However we are still waiting on the delivery containing all rest of the edging strips, so couldn’t really get too far with it today. So frustratingly we left this part of the project unfinished, and will return to it next week.

From here we moved down to the other side of the property, where we are to build a set of sleeper steps. This is solely for access, and will not be used on a daily basis. The sleepers are 200mm (8”) high which is on the high side of what we like to build, but should be all ok. 5”-8” are the parameters we stick to unless circumstances are very unusual, and as we needed to climb 2.6m in hight over a short distance, these steps are 200mm high, with a small 300mm tread. Each step riser is fixed using the usual method, a post at either end, with a sleeper returning on the right hand side. Then the next riser sits on top of the side return, and the whole process is repeated until we reach the top. Unfortunately we ran out of a few materials and time to finish this today, but we’ll pick it up in the morning, and should get it done before midday.

We are reusing some of the old concrete slabs that were lifted earlier in the job to crate a small pathway at the bottom of these steps. Hopefully the weather is nice enough to get all of that finished tomorrow.
As usual any questions please ask. Thank you for your interest.