|
|
Post by DryCreek on Nov 11, 2016 14:00:15 GMT -5
petrushka, I can say with confidence that your erection is very impressive! How are the sections secured to the ground and to each other? In the US they weld them via plates that are cast into the wall, but I don't see that in yours. And are you planning to keep that boulder in the middle of the floor? ;-)
|
|
|
|
Post by petrushka on Nov 11, 2016 17:08:57 GMT -5
It's really mind-boggling. The walls will get steel rods screwed into them at the bottom, and those rods (and the binding with the concrete floor) will hold the walls up once the floor's poured. The slab gets very thick around the edges, like about 12" or more, you can see a grey area at the inside lower edge of some panels that is indicative of the final floor level.
For some earthquake-experience based reasons they have gone away from welding the panels together. Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?
In the middle of the floor are piles of crushed rock as base for the floor, which will 'only' be 4" thick in the centre of each room. So they'll level that before
the concrete trucks come in, put in whatever ducts and the steel ...
|
|
|
|
Post by jim44444 on Nov 11, 2016 18:25:16 GMT -5
Thanks for the link to the pictures. That is a very impressive workshop.
|
|
|
|
Post by DryCreek on Nov 11, 2016 20:38:57 GMT -5
Oh, that's clever with how they tie the walls into the slab. I wondered when I saw the holes at the bottom if it was for tension rods for the concrete slab. They do that for some home slabs here to keep them from cracking - they float intact over the soil (the rods go from edge to edge of the slab and get torqued down behind steel plates).
Here they seem to pour the floor first, then use it as the platform for pouring the wall sections that they tilt up later and weld together. I can only guess that NZ has discovered it's better for the building to sway instead of being rigid.
|
|
|
|
Post by jim44444 on Nov 15, 2016 8:21:06 GMT -5
petrushka , how did those walls perform in the earthquake?
|
|
|
|
Post by DryCreek on Nov 15, 2016 21:49:48 GMT -5
petrushka , how did those walls perform in the earthquake? I was just wondering the same thing, especially if they haven't poured the floor yet. NZ seems to have had quite a few in the last few weeks. |
|
|
|
Post by petrushka on Nov 16, 2016 6:01:07 GMT -5
No earthquake around here. We do have geothermal activity in a few places in the Far North, but nothing much, and we seem to be far enough away from the fault lines that we don't seem to feel any quakes. Which, by the way, is just fine with me!
That last quake, by all accounts a pretty big one except it didn't strike a population centre full on, was about 1000km from here. Kaikoura is a pretty small town, as is Hamner Springs - they are both pretty tourist-y places though. Wellington, the capitol, also got shaken up a bit. Several buildings have already been condemned. Wellington is still waiting for The Big One though ... which apparently is overdue, but that's been bandied about by geologists since the 80s at least.
Not that 30 years counts for much on the geological time scale.
So yes, we're fine. Thanks for asking. The worker bees are getting the reinforcing steel ready for the pour on Friday. We got the - pretty much final - floor plan for the house to the engineer/architect tonight. He thinks he'll be ready to submit it to council after the X-mess holidays.
|
|
|
|
Post by Handy on Oct 20, 2018 22:42:19 GMT -5
I did some Google Street Views of Kaikoura and Hammer Springs. The views (stores and business on main streets) reminded me of my area 30 or 40 years ago, except the cars are new.
The link to the shop didn't work. I am a shop-Garage guy. No plasma cutter here but I do have a welder and do repair on cars.
|
|
|
|
Post by jim44444 on Oct 21, 2018 14:06:31 GMT -5
I think it is time for petrushka to give us an update on the house and workshop. |
|
|
|
Post by petrushka on Nov 2, 2018 2:02:17 GMT -5
I think it is time for petrushka to give us an update on the house and workshop.
Well, ok. The house is done; we got the sign-off from the council last month, but we already moved in on June 21st.
Teething trouble, of course. The carpet in the living area had to be replaced because it was not bonded properly;
we experienced a long dry spell so it took close to 6 weeks to fill the swimming pool with water, then we started
heating it. Fast forward another 6 weeks and I finally got the underfloor heating started (it gets its warm water from the swimming pool, passively). But, by and large, we're nearly done _inside_. I need to build one, two, three more sets of shelves. We need to paint the place on the outside this summer.
Meanwhile we need to do something about landscaping and finishing off the driveway. I won't do any of that, I'll get contractors in. Oh, and in 3 weeks we'll get another 12 solar panels. The 7.9 kW rated array we have does
not, most days, make enough electricity to feed the heatpump for the pool, we seem to be about 2 kw short on gray days. They won't pay for themselves in a hurry, obviously, it's more the principle of the thing. I want to cover most of our usage.
Life isn't bad. I swim half an hour every day, and go play senior table tennis for a few hours twice a week. The wife has joined 4 (!) craft groups to do with wooly and other fibrous stuff. Spinning, weaving, felting, sewing, dying. And I edit
stories for 3 authors on Storiesonline. I've started a meetup group for boardgames at our house that is well attended, and moderate on a local neighbourhood
support website (nothing much to moderate there).
Life goes on .....
|
|
