Buckets isn't the worst idea. There are speculations that water was the primary element used to create the Egyptian Pyramids and for the upper half, they had to get a buttload of water up there and it is suggested that they handed buckets of water to one another. If you think about how much you could move passing buckets to one another one bucket even every 5 or 10 seconds, you are moving a LOT of material. It's just back breaking work is all! But hey, you're building a studio. Every single step in the build is back breaking hell.1. Here's a tricky one. I know that filling my blocks with sand is good (cheaper than concrete and has a good damping effect) but does anyone know of a way to get sand into the blocks? My walls are 4m high. It can't be pumped. Doing it bucket by bucket up a ladder wouldn't be time efficient, even if a bunch of friends helped. A conveyor belt seems extreme and awkward.
My best idea is some sort of loader that could lift it up to me and I do it by hand from the loader. Still not ideal but at least I wouldn't be going up and down a ladder for every bucket. Loader hire would by tough but I do know a guy down the road that might help out for cheap. Maybe most people build in a basement so they are already at the top.
Sand would be great if you could ensure NO voids and no leakis. Insulation would be alright.2. I have a concrete slab and I want to put solid timber flooring down. The particular type I'm using requires battens or ply sheeting underneath rather than glued directly to the concrete. If I do battens, do I fill the voids with sand? Or insulation? The slab is on ground so there's no load bearing issue. Battens would be 20mm high.
Greg
Greg