English Woodlands Timber put out consistently useful and applicable blogs. This week they cover wet wood and how to take care or prevent problems.
Concrete
(or to be accurate cement)
The production of cement, the world’s most used material after water, contributing up to 7.5% of all CO2 generated annually. There is much being made of using alternatives and cement free concrete is available in block form and as a powdered substitute for cement, to mix on site. This recent article by the BBC highlights the very exciting development of what is currently referred to as electric cement. It involves the complete reuse and conversion of concrete back into cement but with zero carbon. We might not have to use substitute materials at all.
Mood boards but with real products
The Material Bank offers a curated selection of material samples in one place. Arranged by type swatches are easy to locate and pick for a customised box. While it is aimed at architects and interior designers there is a lot to discover that is inspiring and innovative and might lead you to something unexpected.
Water
Wavin have an interesting view on the future of water infrastructure in homes and by extension gardens
In addition Wavin are running a free webinar on how to protect against surface water surges (July 16th). Register here
Ramp calculator
Calculating the degrees, gradient, angle of ratio of a slope and in particular a ramp can be frustrating. The omnicalculator can convert/ calculate over a wide range of topics often with some helpful graphics.
Clay paver textures
Vande moortel offer seamless textures of all products, even allowing them to be mixed and blended. The textures download as Jpgs and work very well in SketchUp.
Batching
Match-Batching can be critical to achieving a consistent finish and appearance when using module materials (bricks, porcelain paving etc). While it’s the responsibility of the contractor to ensure batches are matched and materials drawn randomly from packs within a batch, it is worth knowing about batch identification and why it’s important
This brief guide on Vitripiazza poreclain paving gives a good introduction.
Art & design materials
The humble pencil is probably the best place to start when any aspect of design or detailing is required. Versatile, cheap and infinitely expressive. Austin Kleon recently created a very readable blog on the types and history of the pencil. A worthy intermission from your regular work.