Thursday, September 25, 2008

1st lift completed, 1st pour completed

A course of blocks is one layer all the way around the perimeter. Friday morning (the 19th), there were 3 courses done (above). By Friday evening, 6 courses of block were competed. 6 courses equals a "lift." For Faswall, a lift is 4 feet high. Once the walls are 4 feet high, the concrete can be poured into the holes. Below shows the completed first lift. The empty space in front is the start of the opening for the basement bedroom egress window. As the second lift goes up, you'll see a lot more openings for windows appear. (Don't forget, you can get the picture to enlarge if you double click on it.)
Below is a view from the rear of the property.
Below, a view from the hill in front.
Here's Joe Haaf pouring cement from the boom into the walls.



If you look carefully in the close-up above, you can see the cement flowing between the blocks from left to right. As the cement is poured down into the block, it needs to flow between the blocks, as there is rebar placed horizontally every third course.
The photo above shows the cement truck operator moving the boom, the bottom shows the boom extended its full 55 feet.

Joe's worker is using a vibrating snake to get the cement to move down and fill up all the holes. the cement level dropped about a foot after he used the snake. Shelterworks, who manufactures the Faswall here in the U.S., recommends against using a vibrator, but this is a small one especially made for ICFs.

First lift is finished and ready to cure!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Walls are going up!

The two above and below pictures were taken Friday morning (Sep 12th) before work. The forms for the footings are mostly in place. Rocksolid Concrete had to have a city inspector come out and inspect before they could do the pour.When I stopped back after work on Friday, the footings had been poured and the first two courses of block had started. They put as many pallets of blocks in the hole as would fit, so as few blocks as possible had to be carried from pallets outside the hole. The walls looked plumb. You can see the wool inserts (for insulation) in the block holes and also rebar sticking up out of the holes. The blocks are stacked offset on each course. The first course of blocks (the bottom layer) was set directly onto the still-wet cement footings. The second course was stacked on top of the first, offset by half. It's hard to see from the pictures, because the blocks have a vertical "dent" in the middle of each side, but when the second course is stacked on the first, the blocks are shifted over so the middle of the block in the second course is centered over
seam betweens the blocks in the first course. It's no different than the setting of bricks or regular cement blocks; you always offset each course.