Ordering concrete for a Mirdif villa or extension

Mistakes we try to prevent

We will start with what goes wrong, because on a villa job it is rarely the concrete. A neighbour's car blocking the street. A mixer that cannot turn into a narrow sikka. A pump nobody booked because the slab looked close to the gate. A pour fixed for 1 pm in August with a slump meant for the morning. Each of these can cost a pour, and on a small job one lost pour is a large share of the budget.

The stages of a Mirdif extension

Blinding under footings, usually one load or less. Footings and ground beams on a substructure mix. Estimate them as length times width times depth for each element; an extension with 20 m of strip footing at 0.8 by 0.5 m is 8 m³.

The ground slab and the roof slab follow on superstructure. A 10 by 8 m roof slab at 200 mm with beams is roughly 18 to 20 m³, two trucks. Interior screed comes last. If you are also replacing the driveway, a fibre-reinforced slab resists the cracking that comes from car loads and heat.

Before the slab, make sure plumbing sleeves, electrical conduits and the damp-proof membrane are in. Once a truck is discharging, there is no time to cut a hole in the polythene or add a forgotten sleeve. Have the contractor walk the slab with you the evening before.

Distance and timing from Al Quoz

Mirdif is about 22 km from our plant in a straight line, and trucks come in by Tripoli Street or Airport Road. That is far enough for traffic to matter, so we dose a retarder for the expected travel time and prefer early slots. Tell us the street, the gate width and where the slab sits on the plot.

Ordering in Mirdif follows our standard readymix concrete Dubai process: the mix, the volume, the pour window.