Monday, we did two and half layers in building up our wall inside the Entertainment Room, that is over seventy blocks! We completed layer 4, then number 5 and number 6 and a little bit of layer 7.
Entertainment-room-Blocks-Row-6-Finished
Entertainment-room-Blocks-Row-7-Started
Tuesday, it was a half day because we are reaching the limit of lifting up the 20kg concrete blocks high enough to get on to the progressing walls whilst being able to see if they were in the right place. We finished layer 7 and a section of layer 8, for which we had to use one of our mobile platforms so we could use up most of the mortar mix we had. The remaining of Tuesday and Wednesday was spent building a safe, spacious working platform for us to stand on and continue building up the wall and finally put on the roof without compromising our effort and muscles. The platforms were made from the same basic frame work as the external one used for the roof, we just adjusted the length of the legs to suit.
The last part of Wednesday was spent moving 121 concrete blocks and making four piles in the middle of the room, ready to be lifted up onto the platform. We couldn’t immediately start a new mortar mix because it was far too late in the afternoon as it generally takes three hours to apply that amount of mortar to the 50 blocks or so. So instead, we moved enough blocks to finish off the final three and half layers (number 8, 9, 10 and 11) before we reach the critical twelfth layer.
Thursday saw us put up over eighty blocks to finish off layer 8, get layer 9 and 10 done completely and on Friday morning, to did layer 11. We also put on the lintel over the doorway.
For the rest of Friday, we laser surveyed the height of the wall to find minimum and maximum variations so we can adjust the height of the final twelfth layer. As the result of this survey, we sliced up 27 blocks of 135mm high, 9 blocks of 185mm high and a couple of 70mm thin ones over the doorway (sitting on the lintel).
We test fitted all these blocks in “dry” mode, including cutting down those blocks in corners and around the windows so everything was ready for the final stage in completing this twelfth layer.
So finally on Saturday afternoon, we mixed our usual load of mortar and proceeded to stick down all these shortened blocks and again, using the laser level , we made sure that they all finished up nice and flat.
Entertainment-Block-Walls-Done-1
Entertainment-Block-Walls-Done-2
Entertainment-Block-Walls-Done-3
So this concludes the building of the concrete walls and on Monday, we can start the massive job of lifting the ten 120kg concrete beams up and plonk them on our new wall!! No Sweat!