Stairs and Backfill

I got the concretors to put in the stairs. I was a bit tricky as the last step was like a hob. They are re-inforced and the concretors assure me I will have no problems. The width of the hob is just 80mm. The rising and going is a respectable 170mm and 270mm. The minimun opening into the utility area is a good 940mm - more than enough for 600mm wide wheelie bins.

Here is the formwork of the stairs. They hammered nails into the mortar joints and was able to brace everything against other walls so as not to put any holes into the concrete.

The concrete truck driver came along with 0.5 cubic metres of concrete. It was wheel barrowed over 10 or so metres in about 5 loads in my dodgy wheel barrow. It was meant to be 80mm slump but it was more like 120mm. As a result, it took ages (3 hours) to go off enough for the guy to strip the formwork and rub everything down (to give it texture) and fill up any voids behind the formwork. Next set of stairs, I might just do it myself.

I have almost finished the backfill of the rear wall.

Slab Still Ok

The slab is still ok with no cracks.

It was a big day today. I spent all day preparing for the block layers. I put in more starter bars. Really to stop lateral shift. I drilled holes and used sikafex to glue them in. It won't do much in the hold down department. The block walls are designed to be minimally classified as re-inforced masonary. There is a reinforced three brick high bond beam across the top. I cut and bent extra steel for the top as well. One in four cores are filled with concrete.

Slab is Ok at the moment

There does not seem to be any cracks forming in the slab. However, the next 24 hours is critical. The Zypex guy turned up to inspect the slab. Apparently they have a solution if it starts cracking.

I kind of though water proofing the concrete would be a good idea. It was part of a holistic approach to keeping the garage dry. It really wasn't so serious for the Zypex guy to turn up. I really don't think I will have a damp problem. My neighbour has excavated a wine cellar that rarely floods. The park next to me falls sharply away - I have been siphoning water using a garden hose out of the beam footings into the park. On the other hand a damp and dank garage would represent a failure to me. I get the feeling that the main benefit of using zypex is to prevent concrete cancer.

An indirect benefit of the zypex guy is that he ensures that the pour is done by the book. He checks the steel, each truck load of concrete, vibration, screeding, troweling and application of curing compound.

Slab is In

The concreters poured the slab today. 36 cubic metres - lots of concrete! I got them to put zypex in again for water proofing.



They formed the step down for the bathroom on the fly using screeds. The guy would let it sit there for a bit while the concrete kind of set.



The slab slightly falls towards the centre. It does not have any fall towards the front, but it is good that any rain will pool in the centre rather than the walls.

I requested a slight upgrade to 32mpa concrete over the specified 25mpa. I'm not too sure why, but it is fairly common. Anyway, the zypex guy kicked up a fuss and so pragmatically it was put to 40mpa. I'm really hoping that there are no cracks.

The zypex guy came to supervise everything. He thought the steelwork was fine. Some of the steel was a bit high, so we ended up pushing it down a bit.

Steel Inspected

I got my steel inspected today. No problems :) I changed it a bit. I said that the concreter suggested a 200mm slab rather than trying to compact some fill on topof my footings. I rang the engineer and he aid ok providing that I had two layers of mesh. I explained this to the council guy and he reply "why wouldn't you".

I ended up suspending the expansion joint just offset over the internal beam. I guess it defeats the purpose of having an expansion joint.

Slab Steel

The slab's steel arrived today. 22 x SL92 - Another 1.5 tons of steel. Initially the guy said he would have to but it on the verge - oh no! Then we worked out he could put it just in front of the house if I removed the fence. Then I offered to give him $50 if he could put it into the garage. He did it! Only then he told me that it was illegal to do what he did - opps. I guess that means unsafe or something.



It took me the day to umm and arr about how to lay the mesh. I ended up cutting them in two and putting them in a pattern around the piers. The mesh cut in half were nice and manageable 33kg sheets. I layed out just over half the mesh. Not bad going as the concreter said it would take a couple of guys two days to do the whole thing.



Yesterday I nailed expansion foam to the sides of the block walls using micky pins.



The surveyor came today and marked out the RL on one of the posts.

oh no, 2 cores not full

I stripped off quite a few boards and everything was going fine - all cores filled and then suddenly I discovered two, side by side, not full!

Fortunately, it was only the last block or two that was not full. I made up some mortar and shoved it up there. Pretty much symbolic as there are no post near by and ultimately it does not need to support much.

Core Filling Blocks

The concrete guys were delayed today. They got there though, any everything was done fairly quickly. It took 2 loads of concrete.

I only had a problem with one core and I had to manually fill it with a bucket. It was lucky that I noticed that. Especially as this was one of the cores that had a post holder in it. That core was pretty jammed packed. It had reo, the post holders and the blocks, being corners, had to be around 4cm narrower to accommodate the rock face.

While I was filling this core, the top block was coming apart and was about to blow. The corner rock faces you need to paste a rock face side to the narrow face of the block. I quickly grabbed a giant 1.2m clamp and secured the situation.

The concretor added heaps of water to increase the slump - ease in which it would fill up the cores. Even though adding water is a big no no, I felt it was probably the better of two evils - unfilled cores. The concrete seemed to flow like water. I guess I will find out tomorrow when I strip the forms to determine if the cores filled up ok. Of course I will have no idea regarding the corners and the clean outs are not directly exposed. Everyone thought that a good job had been done on the cores, so that is good.

The post holders were manually centred. Probably not perfectly where they should be, but I guess that is more of a cosmetic thing than a structural thing. All of the post holders had a N16 bar going through them to tie them to the wall.

When I got there this morining the gap filler was still spongy and I was really worried about it blowing out. I quickly raced around puting on silicone - it seems to dry quicker. I probably should not have worried. When the cores were filled, there was not much sign of leakage.



The core filler had to walk ontop of the 2.4m wall to fill the cores - seemed a bit dangerous to me. But I guess he mostly had the boom pump to hold himself steady. There was a bit on tension between the workers with the pump operator wanting not to sheer off too many branches and the core filler wanting the nozzel right above the blocks.

sketchup

The blockouts got put in place today. They block the cement from falling out of the wall.

The rock face made it difficult as normally the form ply would come up over the second layer of blocks. The worker (Carlos) didn't want to cut his ply down to just to fit the first blocks. I spoke to the main concreter guy and we kind of worked out that this was the only way it would be successful. Carlos ended up cutting his ply. At the suggestion of the concreter, I ran silicone and gap filler over the top to fill up any gaps. Some were 1.5cm wide!

Carlos used a ramset gun to hold the 4x2 against the bottom of the formwork and nailed in small pieces of ply to brace the top of the formwork.

The other option, which I could have done, if I had known is to hold the form against the blockwork by tying it to the reo bars. I should have saved some money and done that.



I played around with google's sketchup last night and modeled the garage.

All of the post holders are tied down with N16s so they won't experience lift off without lifting up the garage - around 200 tons.

Vertical Bars

I added the vertical bars today. Another half of a ton of steel. I did some more cleaning of the clean out blocks as well.

Removing Form Work

I removed the formwork from the footings. The plastic is still there, so that should be good for curing. Every hour or so (as they started to dry), I hosed down the concrete. the whether has been cold, dry and very windy - not ideal!

I was relieved that the plastic drain pipe was ok and not damaged when I removed the formwork.

Footings Poured

The inspector came and looked around passed my steel fixing work. I was so relieved.



The concretors did their job perfectly (Universal Concrete Construction). They used a laser level to make sure that the footings were perfectly level for the blockwork. I was pretty happy with everything. I helped out holding the laser level staff. There were 7 people. A concrete truck operator, a pump operator (Clint) , a guy directing the nozzel (John), a guy vibrating (Rob), a guy screeding (Mitch) , a zypex guy (I wanted water proof concrete) and me.

26 cublic metres of xypex got poured. The reason why the plastic exists is to help the concrete cure propertly.

He is Mitch saying something to Rob... We were talking about Micheal Jackson for a bit, so I suspect it was about that. Clint is controlling the pump by remote control - avoiding trees and power poles.



This is John (the main man) and Mitch in action.



Here are the completed footings. I don't really know what the RL is but, I'll figure that out later. The main thing is that they are level, there is enough cover and all of the starter bars are above the concrete. I'll have to bend some up as some are pretty low.



Here is the north east corner retaining wall. Of course the slab starts 200mm higher than the footings. So I guess it is going to start above ground level.



I stripped off the formwork (pier liner) from one of the post holders and here it is:

Almost There

I thought that I had booked the inspector in for today, but apparently it was tommorrow. Fortunately, the inspector had sympathy on me and he is coming 8am tomorrow.

I ended up welding the slab ties to the rest of the steel. Much easier! I tied up the block ties with a length of reo to make them stand up straight.

My tip for steel work is use a mig welder. Something light though.

Tying wire

I'm getting better at tying wire. I don't cut a piece off, I just loop the end around the target and pull tight with the nips and the strand of wire.

I twist around with the wire still tort.

I then re grip the wire lower down and start to twist.

After finishing twisting I just squeeze and cut the wire off.

I did some more steel.

More, More Steel

I put in some more steel today.

More Steel

I placed some more steel today. I think I am around 1/3 of the way there.



A real professional steel worker came by today - he was just walking by. He showed me how to properly tie wire and told me everything looked ok.

I managing to nick myself heaps of times with all that rasor sharp wire.

Steel

I started putting in the steel. Lots of it as you can see...

I use reels of steel tying wire and a pair of nips. I'd cut a small piece of wire off the reel which I keep in a pocket. I unwind it from the inside so it does not get tangled. I bend it around the rebar and then twist it with the nips.



This is from the cut off grinder. It is the slag that accumulated at the grinder's defector plate. It is quite solid despite how fragile it looks.

Concrete Piers Poured

I got all the concrete piers poured today. An then it started to rain - it caused quite of flood in my excavation.

The day started well enough. The concrete pump truck arrived just before 7am. It has a huge boom - long enough to reach my piers at the back.



It remained fine while the concrete guys filled the piers. I asked for 140-160mm slump so that vibration was not necessary. However, the concretor got 130mm 25mpa, 10mm aggregate and vibrated the concrete. I was pretty happy. 130mm slump is very runny.



Then it started to rain and rain and rain. I covered everything as much as possible, but the piers for Sydney Water's sewer protection were soon underwater. They should be OK as the rain was not allowed to rip into it and there was not much current with the water not really going anywhere.



I went home to have a warm shower and then headed back to do the finishing. It took all the forms holding the post holders off and mad sure the outside ones were properly domed.

Then there was a thud - some of the retaining shoring moved - oops. I'm really hoping for no rain in the next couple of days. They are predicting 10-20mm tomorrow and Monday - :(

The results are in and 34mmof rain fell yesterday. I'm thinking my shoring will not last much longer.

Rain - Flooding

It rained heavily today. It is terrible working in the rain. It slows me down and welding is more difficult.

I wired up some of the re-inforcing. You can see that the pier hole is completely flooded...

Trench Mesh

This morning I made 90 Z bars for tying the strip footings to the slab. The Z bars are 1m lengths with 2 bends to form a kind of a Z. It only took me a few hours, but I didn't start until 8:30am. I enjoyed a rare breakie with Liz and Louka.

I'm getting better at bending, but it would help it I weighed more.

I headed off to the work site and started to fix steel. I'm better at welding than tying so I welded the stirrups to the lengths of trench mesh.