Sleeping on it works!

The second half of the second-last course didn’t take long, then it was time for more steel placement, including the problem L-bars.

In my Sketchup drawing of the retaining wall I had drawn the L-bars such that they were placed as close to the edge of the suspended slab as the spacing would allow for maximum engagement.  This meant that they were positioned in the centre of the blocks in the final course. Problem.

The solution was simple - place one less L-bar and offset them by one bar, placing them at the edge of the blocks rather than the centre. Since the blocks are open at the ends, I could place them between the L-bars with little contortionism.

I’ve also wired in some threaded rod for the top plates supporting the roof above the pump room.

The rest of this course took most of the day, but finally:

It.

Is.

Finished.

:D

2.42m tall and it’s not the straightest wall in the world, but it’s straight enough for me. You can see how the mis-sized blocks crept up on me over the full height of the wall…

The important thing is that I’ll be able to place some forms at the top of the wall so that when it’s core filled, we’ll be able to “over fill” the wall and bring it up to the height we need and make sure the final surface is perfectly flat and level, to accept the forms for the suspended slab.

Speaking of which, I spoke (well, emailed) Peter about these because I’d been completely unable to find an insulated formwork suitable for a suspended slab. Bondor in New Zealand seem to have something like this, but their Australian arm basically only sell wall and ceiling panels for commercial use. True to form, Peter suggests we innovate a little and use second-hand 50mm thick coolroom wall panels, with lots of propping. Sounds like a plan - I have a lead on some of these for about $15 per square metre, which is about a quarter of the price of the non-insulated Kingflor forms which were originally specified in our building permit.

I never did get around to propping the wall, so knowing my luck it’ll have fallen over by the time I get back to it on Friday for the building inspection…