Friday, March 16, 2012

Short weekend!

Not much going on this weekend, which feels a little odd I must say - it’s Friday night and I’m back in Melbourne! The wall hadn’t fallen over with the wind, and when the building inspector came by today to have a look at my wall he gave two thumbs up, so we’re clear to core fill next week.


So for the rest of the day (in between rain squalls) I made up a grout hopper out of old form ply which slots over the top of the concrete blocks, so we don’t make an awful mess when the wall is filled. I’ve lined up the same guy who pumped the concrete for the garage slab - he’s not exactly cheap, but he’s a real pro and this is one job that I want to go according to plan. Enough knowledgeable people have told me that core filling is a sod of a job that I’m not going to attempt to take any easy short cuts. (Like so many other things in this project, I’ve never done this before but I can’t really see how pumping a wet concrete slurry into a cavity wall can be a difficult job. I guess I’ll find out next week  )


The hopper didn’t take very long to put together (yet again, designing first in Sketchup saves a heap of time) - I didn’t get a photo of the end result, but it’s almost exactly the same as this:



While I had the saw bench assembled I also started cutting the timbers for my rammed earth forms - I got most of the columns cut before the rain set in again and put an end to the day :(


The rest of this weekend is a bit of a write-off from a building perspective - Ewan wants to go to the Grand Prix tomorrow, and it’s Alissa’s birthday on Sunday (not to mention the F1 race) so there’ll be no more progress now until Friday, when we fill the wall.


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