We finished off the tidying up task by removing the last lengths of shuttering and putting all the loose pieces back under cover in our Timber Storage. The used pegs (which are no longer usable) and broken boards we took to the bonfire corner up on Mount Sod ready for a day of wet showers to have […]
Today, we started going around removing the shuttering boards and planks from the foundation strips. We also picked up the lumps of concrete that spilled over the edges and started the general process of tidying up after the great day of 14 cubic metres of concrete being poured and splashing around our trenches! We got a […]
Here’s the site at 7:46 before we got started … Our day started at 8:30 am with the arrival of the concrete pump lorry (half an hour early) .. The pump operator Alan set up his equipment including orientating the lorry, putting out the support arms, priming the pump and putting down tarpaulin sheets to protect the Loke […]
We finished the preparation tasks, in readiness for the ready mixed concrete coming Monday. We went around all the trenches and making sure we can work alongside every stretch of it with our new patting and scraping tools. Plus we sliced off the excess “sticking up” bits of the pegs that are holding the shuttering […]
Today, we put together a series of tools for scraping and patting down the liquid concrete in the trenches. We have a range of different height of shuttering so each one needed a different tool made. Also we discovered that the bottoms of the trenches seems to have “sunken” downwards since we had scraped and […]
Today, we started organising our new viaducts shoots so to be ready for the arrival of the ready mixed concrete, but discovered the “heavy” truth of concrete and how it sluggishly works!! The representative from the concrete supplier came this morning to discuss and advise us on what will and .. what will NOT .. […]
Today, in the lovely sunny weather we are still having here, we constructed a homemade mobile viaducts to help carry the ready mixed concrete from the lorry up on our Loke, down to the various locations across the whole site. It is constructed from our supply of 18 mm OSB sheets, sliced up into 300 […]
The building inspector has to check on the construction at certain critical stages and poring foundations is one of them… So today he came and had a look at our finished foundation trenches, asked some questions and gave us the nod of approval!
The last stage of preparing the foundations have been completed. There are two places that need reinforcement, the entertainment room (beacause of the heavy walls and roof) and around the tunnel allowing the air from the earth tubes into the house. We chopped up some steel weld mesh we had already, this has 6mm rods at 200mm grid […]
Today, we finished off scraping all the trenches of our strip foundations to make sure we have brought up the depth of the trenches so it is more consistent. We worked out that if we had allowed an extra 10 mm of depth everywhere, then we would need another 800 litres of concrete, nearly a […]