Hi, I am brand new to Landscape JN and in a few months about to finish a Hort course as a mature student at Merrist Wood. I would love some advise for a college project design assignment, I have built a brick "coal bunker" in the shape of a rectangle garden seat on a patio, seat is about 1650 x .750mm. Three of the sides (back and both sides) are 2 courses higher than the seating area to provide low back and arm rests. I want to put a hinged wooden lid on it to access the coal but also use it as a seat, but I am at a dead-end for the lid. I thought of hardwood decking but not sure how to seal the gaps and is heavy over this size - I don't want water through the joins to wet the coal below. And also I would need channels at either end under where the wood seat finishes to drain water towards the front, as the lid will sit on a ledge inside the brick frame.
I see lots of nice rendered seating areas with wooden tops, and would like to create the same effect, but mine is framed with brick. Any guidance would be gratefully accepted, I am very handy/practical with hard landscaping but not a joiner, so would be prepared to get someone else to do it if defeated. Thanks Trish
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Thanks very much Karl, I will do asap.
Trish
Karl Harrison said:
Hi Karl
I have today photographed my brick seat come coal bin. Plse don't laugh at my attempt at woodwork. Built last summer and I had a go at seat lid using hardwood decking, but as you can see from photo the underside is wet as it leaks (no surprises) between the lengths. I used 4x2 as framing timber. The rear section is fixed and I hinged the front. The problem I have is that also using the decking timber underneath to frame the lid, it is quite heavy and it flexes slightly (end to end) when lifting and has popped some of the screws.
A drain gully is in front of the seat area.
Total lid measurement is 1580 x 800.
I thought of using thin marine ply sheet underneath and fixing decking timbers to this, glueing and screwing the timber lengths to seal it. I have no specific budget for it, have already spent on hardwood timber and a wasted attempt - so just need to finish it and use pics for specs for design
work completion. So would like most cost effective option.
Any advice you can give would be very much appreciated. Thank you very much.
Trish
Hi Trish
You could use tongue and groove recycled plastic wood planks - something like the products made by Kedel http://www.kedel.co.uk/recycled-plastic-lumber-timber-wood.html - waterproof and "green" too.
Hi everyone,
Thank you very much for all your ideas!! I'm sorry I haven't replied sooner, have been out of the country on two occassions working and behind in most things at the moment. I really appreciate the advice. Gary, I particularly like the pvc option given lightness and reusing the timber. And I guess this way building a pvc batten across each side end (front to back) would prevent water flow channelling between the timbers to each side and dripping down the sides into the bin itself. It would drip through and fall foward on the pvc and out to the front. Is there any chance you can let me know a product name for the PVC, I will try googling it anyway.
Paul, unfortunately I did not do the brickwork on this occasion, but have completed at home a square raised brick tree surround and also 2 x 6' walls with piers each end and a tall gate, part way across my back garden, enclosing my compost, firewood and junk area, but brickwork is not a love of mine, so just tinker.
THANK YOU, I really appreciate your help. Will finish the design in the next month for college and the build in the next couple of months and let you know how I get on. Unfortunately (for the next few months) I still work almost full time (outside of gardening) and also attend Merrist Wood college 1 day a week, so only have some weekends to get projects complete.
Thanks for message. (sorry this is long) Yes I have just completed Level 3 Nat Certificate in Horticulture and it was one day a week on a Friday, but they change the day of the week with each course and year, it depends what tutors are available each term. It took 2 years to complete. (A diploma is 3 years)
The exact course I was on, is no longer provided, the governing body has rewritten the syllabus so I am not sure what it is called now but there is an equivalent. The syllabus was changed 12mths ago.
Be aware also if you do have the time, that the fulltime course was not 5 days a week but only 3 days a week, so some squashed all their "homework" into those days/nights and worked 2 days a week. But their workload was high. But it shortened the course to 1 year.
From what I understand (I was at an initial meet and greet at the college 2 yrs ago with a landscaping student and it "appears" the Landscaping courses are almost primarily practical in hard landscaping skills - with very little theory - it 'seemed' full of young students (16-19yrs) who weren't that interested in school work and were learning practical skills. Saying that I have no idea if there is a "mature student" part-time class which would get around all the youngsters. Most youngsters are on the full-time courses.
My course on the whole was probably 65% written theory assignments and study and 35% practical (rough estimate some units more, some less), but it covered Plant Knowledge and Maintenance, Pests & Diseases, Propagation, Practical field work experience (250 hours required outside of college) Specialised Hort machinery (practical use of and basic maintenance mowers, strimmers, hedge-trimmers, cultivators) Machinery (tractors, forklifts, mechanical barrows), Turf care & maintenance, basic irrigation (for nurseries not domestic), Hort Science, Design Principles, Business management plus others. Some of the units only touched on the very basics, so you weren't extremely proficient but it gave a v.good grounding. The hort plant and science tutors particularly were very good! Business syllabus was rubbish - not about running a business - (what is a business, aims, objectives, motivation theory).
So the difference is Hort is much more classroom theory and some practical than Landscaping, mainly practical.
For my course there were loads of units available to study, the college picked 12 (for the 2 yrs) that they wanted to teach from that list (6 specific ones were mandatory). When we got the list of units provided for our 2nd year we all complained as they were mainly nursery units and none of our class were ever going to work in a nursery, so we asked if they would change them to cover more practical skill as we were mostly all actively or seeking gardening maintenance jobs and they did change the units to more suit us, which was great.
If it was 'me' and I wanted a good grounding I would do a Hort course or even R.H.S quals at MW (more in depth I think) and take advantage of all the short courses on weekends/hols they do for hard landscaping - some are only £55 a day.
But it really depends what you want to do with your career - just landscaping, just gardening, or provide a service where you can do both?