Laying down cement for walkways around the house 2016-01-27
ConstructionLandDevelopmentWalkways
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We began laying down the cement for the walkways around the first house. This house is meant to be for my mother in law, and we’ve been planning for a long time to construct a walkway that can be used to circle the house with a walker for exercise, or even in a wheelchair just for fresh air.

The time finally arrived to build the walkway itself. As with everything else on the land, we’ve been targeting a more organic look with as few straight lines as possible. Unfortunately, this goal seems to run counter to something that an older individual that has difficulty walking can use easily. So we compromised on cement (not the most natural looking surface for a walkway, but the most flat for a walker). Additionally, we went for a combination of straight sections and curves.
The section in front of the house is mostly curves:

Before laying down the cement, the workers lay down sand to the appropriate level, put a mesh of rebar on top of that, and then build a mold for the sides from scrap polycarbonate leftover from the other construction held in place with wooden stakes in the ground. Then they pour on the cement:

The “metal trees” walkway section that runs along the side of the house is straight from the parking area to the front of the house so that she doesn’t have to take a winding path if she doesn’t want to:

The parking lot area is just a big flat area that will undergo the same process. Currently, the sand is leveled and the rebar mesh is laid down, and the cement will go over it some time in the next few days:

For the driveway and parking area, we have asked the workers to imprint grooves in the cement surface to help with traction when it is wet, and we have also planned out which direction to slope it slightly so that the rainwater ends up where we intend it. I don’t think we will really know how well this works until the first rains, but then again, quite a bit of what we are doing is new for us, so we will just have to wait and see. 🙂