Akyma was started in Nairobi in 2020 with a hired grinder and one garage floor that two other contractors had already coated twice. What follows is the site diary: a page a year, what it cost, and the rule that came out of it.
Entry 01 / 07 · Site diaryLavington, Nairobi
2020: The borrowed grinder
Nairobi went quiet in March and the sites went quiet with it. Two of us, a hired planetary grinder, a pickup, and 40 m² of garage in Lavington that two other contractors had already coated twice, both times straight over a sealed slab nobody had opened.
We took it back to bare concrete over a weekend and poured it on the Monday. It is still down. Nothing about the product was different from what the other two had used. The grinding was.
- The rule
- Nothing goes on a slab we have not opened first.
PrepPlanetary grinder, hired by the day
- On the crew
- 2
- Floors laid
- 1
Datum · 2020 · the first slabBelow the line · what each year cost
What doesn't
change
Six years of entries, and four lines that have been in every one of them. These are the ones we will not trade away for a start date.
- Registered contractorNCA-6 · Building works
- Registered with the National Construction Authority in building works, class NCA-6. The registration number prints on every quote we issue, and the register is public; look us up before you pay anyone a deposit.
- Accredited applicatorsManufacturer
- The crew is trained and signed off by the resin manufacturers whose systems we lay, which is what keeps a product warranty alive behind our workmanship one.
- Slab moisture testingASTM F2170
- In-situ relative humidity probes read at 40 % slab depth after 72 hours. Over 75 % RH we specify a moisture-tolerant primer or we do not coat. No exception has been made yet.
- One crew, start to finishNo subcontracting
- Grinding, repair, prime, pour and seal are the same fifteen people. Floors are won or lost in the preparation, and we have never handed that part to anybody else.