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.

Still drying out

My trenches are still drying out. Some of the ones located deeper (>2m) are clay and are very mushy. It is incredible to think that my deepest excavation is 2.7m below ground level.

I tried in vain to contract the council on Friday about the pour for the piers. They rang back on Monday and I fessed up that they have been poured. I explained that Sydney Water had inspected them. They just want photos and a copy of Sydney Water's report.



The rear excavation was really starting to fail, the enbankment was starting to collapse much like you see waves eroding a sand bank on a beach. Whole chunks were falling into to trench. I immediately executed my emergency plan which is to do more shoring. I tied the timber posts back to star pickets about three metres away. That seemed to arrest the collapse.



I have removed some of the form work for the piers.

I cut the formwork away with a jig saw after slightly raising it. I used a crow bar to remove the blocks of wood from the sides of the pier liners.

Post Holders

I went to the work site early this morning to clean the concrete off the post holders and to wet the concrete to aid curing.



The outside post holders are looking good. There is a slight dome to allow water to drain...



The internal post holders are doubled up to support the enormous weight of a post.



You can see the shoring is beginning to fail...



The depths of the different holes of the 300mm stump are as follows:
F0 2m, H0 1.91m, M0 1.73m, M1 2.15m, N1 1.75m, M3 1.92m, N3 1.69m, M4 1.71m. Theses heights are all around 0.2m below ground.

The depths from the bottom of the foundation's trench of the Sydney Pier holes are as follows: 1.7m, 1.5m, 1.4m, 1.1m, 1.2m, 1m, 0.9m, 0.7m, 0.5m.

The depths from 0.2m below the FFL of the garage of the centre holes are: D3 1.03m, D1 1M, F3 1.14M, F1 1.05m, H3 1.21m, H1, 1.14m, J3 1.03m, J1 1.12m.

All holes were drilled into the solid clay level as specified by the geo techincal report.

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.

I broke my Camera

Unfortunately I broke my camera today. It is a pity since I put up the forms for the centre columns. I've arranged for the piers to get poured tomorrow. I'm hoping that there will be no rain.

Here is the steel inside the piers for the protection of Sydney Water's sewer... 4 x N16, 50mm clearance, 10mm circular ties every 300mm.




Here is the steel for the garage level stumps. Again 4 x N16, 10mm circular ties every 300mm



Here is a picture of the garage stumps inside their forms...

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.

10-20mm of Rain

It was predicted that there was a 90% chance of 10-20mm of rain falling today. At first light I went around making sure the site was prepared. I even dug a trench to try to re-direct water off to the park. I only got 1mm of rain. The Sydney CBD, on the other hand, on Wednesday got 30mm!



Due to the weather, I didn't want to start laying plastic or the steel yet, so I went around doing my standby tasks like finishing off the cages for the down stairs columns, putting up a support post for the water taps, finishing cutting the holes in the pier caps, back filling the sewer pipe work and more measuring out.



I got my pier inspections done for the sewer. The guy was fairly inpressed. At one point, the sewer was 1.85m deep and I had a 2.7m deep pier hole. It is sure not cheap - $450 for 5 minutes of inspecting on their part.

A Catastophe! aka Moving a Hole

I started forming the down stairs columns, but there was a catastrophe! On of the holes was so badly aligned, I would not be able to mount a column on it! I though and though and decided I will move the hole. It turned out fairly easy as the sub grade is mostly compacted sand. I back filled the void with the excavated sand.



I put a lid on each of the piers with a hole in it to suit the column. I'm getting 140-160mm slump concrete so I though I would try to seal the form with some other concrete. I hope this goes well.


Here is a picture of a finished cage ready to put into a pier...



I started welding up the cages for the down stairs piers.

The steel for the footings arrived - yay!

I rang up the concretor and canceled the two steel workers for Wednesday and Thursday and delayed the pour by a week. I think I am getting a handle on this assertive thing. I'm started to use terms like "I have decided" rather than "I would like to".

Pier Forms

Today I cut up most of the timber and steel for the downstairs piers. I also attached blocks of timber to the pier liners to make them level. Now all I need to do is to cut holes in the pier lids for the columns, attach the side braces and post holder form supports. I also need to weld up the cages - which should be a lot simpler. I will probably need to brace the pier supports to make sure they remain vertical and tie the pier lids to the ground with more timber and star pickets.

Here is a picture of the completed column forms for upstairs:

Plumbing Inspection

The plumbing inspector came and queried the height between the main drain and downstairs bathroom floor waste. Fortunately it just made the minimun height. He finally signed off and that was good.

I finished the cages for the stand alone piers and for the sydney water piers down the north side of the house. Sydney water requires that their drain is protected by piering.

I've just got 6 piers in the middle of the house. Hopefully I will get these done tomorrow.

Cages

I've almost finished the cages. I went through and made sure that the centre of the stirrup was spot on. Welding up cages is so much easier. Not shown here is the top bit that narrows for the stirrup to sit into.

It has been really cold - probably around 10 degrees or so for the last two days. Oh well at least it has not being raining.

Draining In

The plumber came around and roughed in the drains. The inspection will be on Friday :)

I welded up a cage for another pier - much easier. It should not take much time to do the rest now that I know what I am doing. I use a MIG welder which inheritly is low hydrogen to maintain the strength of the reo.

I spoke to a concretor and I have arranged for some steel fixers and the concrete to be poured on Friday next week.

Trench Excavation

It was a big day today. I didn't finish until 5:45 (45minutes after dark). The excavator guy came to do the excavation.


My pier liners are lined up to protect the mains sewer (against nuclear attack)





You can see that the strata changes quite a bit. It goes from white sand to gravel to yellow sand quite quick.



I also sprained my ankle today - oops.

Marking Out Excavation

Today, I marked out the excavation and attempted to verify all the points. They all seem to be within the 5mm accuracy I desire. I used pink marking paint.

The guy dropped the excavator around.

I used the following calculations to determine the points in a cartesian plane. I derived this at the work site using the Pythagorean theorem.

First Cage and Shoring up the Shoring

The steel arrived last night around 6pm - I was not there - it gets too dark to see around 5:30. They forgot the tie wire and fast wheels. I went down to the local concrete place and got some and decided that I will try to wire up a cage.

It was really difficult. I tried tying the wire tight so it didn't slip - that didn't work. I tried tying with the cage lying down - it kept on collapsing. Eventually I tried standing the whole thing up. that seemed to work, but I am concerned that all of the coils will split once the concrete pour started.

I going to try to weld them.

I'm a bit concerned that the footings are going to take ages to pour so I have tried to shore up the shoring using wooden beams and star pickets.

It didn't rain today!

It didn't rain today - yay!!!! I pretty much completed all the forms and bent some rebar for the columns. I'm storing the rebar in my toilet... I'm still waiting on steel - maybe the 10th?

I ended up re-inforcing the dogy ply with some proper 17mm form ply. I used a jigsaw to cut the holes - much quicker and easier.

Pier Forms and Plumbing

Yesterday and today, I got stuck into completing the pier forms and getting some plumbing done.

I arranged for a plumber to remove the boundary trap and plumbing that would exist in the foundation. He just pretty much cut the sewer at the boundary and put in a 90 degree angle to shoot the drain vertically and re-connect my toilet. I also got him to move the water meter further towards the letter box - now it is right out of the way :)

The plumbing inpector will need to look at the plumber's handy work so I shored it up to keep the sand out.

My pier form work is almost finished. You can see the post stirrup being held in place using some timber. I routed out a slot in the top timber for the post to sit in.

Routing out Holes

I spent most of the day routing out the (30cm dia) holes in the plywood piers caps.



I found that three of them were miss-aligned so I had to alter the pier liners. I created a sleeve - a bit like a spout in a beer jug to correct them. I only corrected two of them as the third was only miss-aligned by a 1.5 centimetres. I used Tek screws to join the sleeves.



I also tried out my rebar bender. I works well but I am not heavy enough so I have to use a bit of momentum to get it to bend. I will probably use N16 for everything - not much difference in price



My order of pier/column liners sort of arrived today. They stuffed up and delivered pier liners instead of column liners - arg. They promised me that I will get the pier liners tomorrow.

I spoke to the steel guy today, they will be fixing up my order and deliver the rest tomorrow.

To measure out, I use a Leica Disto D3. The reason being is that it can compensate for angular trajectories up to 45 degrees (from memory). It works well outdoors - contrary to the blurb - I think they don't want to cannibalise their more expensive models. At 25m, I would recommend using it either late afternoon or early morning. My site is not level, so the angular feature is a god send. It also measures to the nearest millimeter.

The forecast for today was 90% chance of 10-20mm. I think the site received 1mm.

Piers

I found that the accuracy of the bored piers were not up to scratch, so I have decided to realign the columns by cutting them back and placing a smaller column on top.

Today I just put a plywood top on all the piers. One of them, I cut a 30cm diameter hole with a router. I put the hole exactly where it should be. The form work for this is quite interesting. Concrete put huge pressure on the form work and it can be a bit tragic if thing blow. To this end I have securely fasten the plywood to the piers using blocks of wood.

Some steel arrived today. Not everything - I'm going to have to chase them up about this.

I also spoke to a couple of plumbers, one of them called his mate - a real sales man who didn't seem to be interested in what I was trying to do. He seemed to want to sell me every single upgrade possible. Fortunately, the other plumber was down to earth and was OK with my suggestion - which is just to put a riser from the sewer and deal with the rest after the footing have been poured.