We collected the rented Magnetic drill this morning. The drill has an electromagnet in the base so once you position the drill you turn on the magnet and the drill is fixed in position so you can drive the cutter into the work. The cutter is hollow and has a retractable center pin which allows the accurate positioning of the drill, cutting fluid also flows down this hollow from the bottle above the drill.
The-Mag-Drill
Mag-drill-cutter-and-center-guide
Today, drilling and cutting of steel pieces continues with the 9 pieces which tie the front and back beams together.. These are about 2.6m long 50mm square tubes with two holes drilled at each end and the tops of the boxes sliced off to exposed the drilled holes.
Beam Tie Drilled and sliced
To make it easier to make the 9 pieces a jig is made to allow the same actions to be repeated over and over again with consistent results.
Today, in the workshop, lots of pieces were drilled, like for example, the 10mm thick plates with 13mm holes in the 4 corners (7 of these, one for each leg).
Steel-plates-drilling
This morning, again in brilliant sunshine, we finished off the smoothing and levelling out the ground around the Great Room.
Leveling-surrounds-Great-Room
It is all very neat and tidy now and we can walk or push trolleys right around the building, gaining access to the Swimming lane where the timber store is, or pass the Garage or along the front beside the Loke.
Today, in lovely sunshine, we carried on with the job of moving and levelling out the excess piles of soil and sand heaped around the outside of the house.
Leveling-surrounds-Back-done
We finished the remaining section along the back, past Bedroom 1 and the Great Room, continuing around the corner towards the conservatory. Surprisingly, the heaps of sandy soil that came out of doing the foundation strips, is still disappearing to fill up the gap right behind the Perimeter Wall, up to the ground level, well actually, we decided to level to the height of 2 blocks up off the foundation which is 50mm (2inches) below the real ground level. This means that we will have a bit of room to lay down the proper finishing surface like brick weave for the patio and footpaths etc.
The work continued today in preparing all the pieces of steel work, cutting some to the correct sizes, some being drilled with bolt holes and screw holes.
There are hundreds of pieces, some 3mm thick, all the way up to 10mm thick plates, all needing some work on them.
It is a matter of being accurate and taking it slowly but surely to get all the pieces ready for assembly later on.
Today, now that the steel has all arrived, all cross checked against original order list, the major task of preparing the pieces and practicing the various welds and drilling tasks is being done.
We took one of spare pieces of hollow tube (the 160mm by 80mm size) and a piece of a 10mm plate and welded it on the bottom end of the leg, and then sliced away a small section through the weld to inspect how well (or badly) it went, as you can see in the picture below, it looks very good.
Test-weld-of-leg-plate-join-2
Test-weld-of-leg-plate-join-Weld-Detail-1
Also, the plasma cutter seems to cut the 10mm thick plate fairly easily so this means we can cut the stock size plates to the more desired sizes to fit more neatly on the framework. It is looking all good so far!
Today, the work of smoothing out the ground around the outside of the house continues, working alongside the Garage and the side door of the house.
Leveling-surrounds-Utility-n-Bed3
Leveling-surrounds-Back-before-work
Then, around the corner, finishing off the patch at the beginning of the Swimming lane and continued along the back alongside Bedroom 2 and Bedroom 1. It is surprising that the large mounds of soil is disappearing in filling up the gap next to the External Wall and so far there is next to nothing “left over” to have to get rid of – Phew!!
This afternoon, the steel arrived and was off loaded. The lorry came backwards down the Loke.
Steel-on-the-lorry
The big I-beam pieces were offloaded down inside the house itself, lying on concrete blocks with long length of 2inch by 6inch planks to support the 6 pieces.
Steel-I-Beams-unloaded
The rest of the pieces were offloaded on pallets in front of the house alongside the Loke, and then each piece was measured to verify that they were correct and present.
All-Steel-unloaded
Most of the pieces were carried over to the external rack to store them under cover while waiting to be processed. The only items left outside were the big fat box beams which are the legs for holding up the I-beams. These box beams are very heavy indeed, being 160mm by 80mm with thick 8mm metal walls and having a length of 5.4 metres long!! Steel is dense and it all adds up to high weight loads!!
The next job is to drill holes in the giant I-beams where we are probably will need to hire a magnetic drill press to clamp the drill into place and make 13mm holes in various places. Also there will need dozens of 5mm holes too! the hire cost will likely be about £80 for a week hire time.
Today, before the steel arrived, the soil around the perimeter of the house and it’s wall, continued to be levelled, covering up the rainwater pipework and making it smooth and relatively flat.
The area around the corner of the Swimming lane and the Garage was sorted out and made level, and will continue along the back pass Bedroom 3 towards the Great room.