As you can see, on the bottom there is a classic foundation. Blocks filled with steal bars and concrete.
To give structure to the inside- and the outside of the wall i tried different things.
A U-Steal that is mainly used for the roof, filled with concrete, and a bar of steal (0,5 inch) for the corners.
In between i used columns only made of concrete but with two bars of steal. The bars fit exactly in the blocks of the foundation. Important, check the size of the hole of the blocks, as they will not come all with the same size. also there are big quality difference in blocks. Some break on their own weight!
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| before... |
Here you see a practical way to make the forms for the columns.. just putting the U-steal in between.
Even if the house is up now, im thankfull for comets of the stability.
What i learned so far: Thinks break because they get to their limit of pressure, or tension. Concrete only handle 10% of tension of what it can handle in pressure. steal is also good in handling tension. both grow and shrink the same way on temperature. steal covered by concrete will not be exposed to oxidation a perfect match.
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| ..after |
Important if you want to make sure you concrete get hard.
1) Do not put to much water. a "soup" will only have half of the strength compared to a "slow moving cream"
2) Get out the air. Concrete is stronger the air ;)
3) Concrete stops getting harder when it gets dry.
You get 50% if you just let it dry, but 75% after three days, 100% after a week, and 125% after a month. So if the sun is shining make it wet.
If you tell this to the worker, the properly will ignore you, so you need to do it your own.
A part of the final structure. The iron bars are welded to the U Steal. the columns are welded at the bottom with another bar.
Here you see the a problem. The mesh is not completely straight. At the beginning we fixed it by connecting it to the columns with wire.this gives you visible results, but does not actually fix the problem that the wire is to big (in some places.) but it was still a bad idea, because those bubbles will course you a loot of work later when you want to get the wall plane. also all those wires that we put will give you headache filling the spaces between those little columns. In one place we cut the mesh and connect it again but that was worse
Finally finishing i would i found that a much better approach is to take a hammer.. push the little bars down as shown in the picture.like this you get the mes more less straight.
The structure completed of the first part. welded parts that are not covered with concrete need to be treated. actually here in the picture thay but the treatment also on places where it was not required.
