A flurry of activity today! As I put the finishing touches on the first frame alongside the rammed earth wall, Peter showed up after having dealt with his other job - just in time to help lift it into place. Here it is with the second frame in place too, along with the timbers which will hold the sandwich panels at their correct height above the retaining wall.
With the additional propping in place, we could start installing the sandwich panels! Very exciting :)
The panels are cut very easily with a thin angle grinder disc - they’re only 0.5mm colourbond steel bonded to 50mm polystyrene, so once they’re cut on both sides they just snap apart. Very easy to work with and instant slab insulation!
The rest of them came together very quickly…
The stairwell opening in place…
.. and shortly thereafter, the finished product!
These things are a lot stronger than you’d think. I was very unsure about walking on them given that they’re just 50mm of polystyrene and a couple of thin sheets of tin, but they’re surprisingly stiff. I can walk over them and they barely deflect at all, and the engineer’s specs say that they’re perfectly suitable for concrete when propped at 1m intervals (which we’ve bettered, below) so my fear seems to be well misplaced.
Here’s hoping :)
So that’s about where we left it for the day. I need to be back in Melbourne for the rest of the week, but Peter will continue working to box up the slabs and place and wire the steel ready for the concrete pour.
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