Monday 26 May 2014

Steel is up!

It was quite a process. The long horizontal beams were fairly heavy, about 200kg each! With Eddie, Barrie and John to help we carried the first 2 round, the third proved problematic as it has a vertical brace welded to it. A fifth pair of hands were required, as luck would have it Gordon was passing at the time and was enlisted!.
The raising of the sections was fun, 2 scaffold towers and a block and tackle, some huffing and puffing, a bit of sweating and they were up. They are now bolted together with the exception of one small section, Murray is coming tomorrow with his magnetic drill to drill some extra holes, once the last section is added I can level square and plum. Have ordered a self levelling laser to aid the process ( It is a good excuse to buy tools to play with!).







Friday 23 May 2014

Well! Now we have steel!  Had sheduled it to put up on Saturday but got a head start today, with a big hand from Barrie  there are now 3 columns up and a horizontal.
Have lined up the troops for Saturday 10.30. To lift the big horizontals from the front garden to the back. Once they are round the hope is to hoist them up with a block and tackle strung between 2 scaffold towers.
The kids are enjoying the scaffolding too!

much care is needed with sizes, the holes in the base plates are 20mm, the resin anchor studs are 16mm and the holes into which the resin goes 18mm! Not much room for error!


Hope to post tomorrow "steel up!"

Saturday 3 May 2014

Have also finished the vertical cut for the dpc and have bricked the corner as far as I can without the insulation going in. I dont want to order the insulation till I am in a better place to start using it as I will struggle to store it. Photo below isalso a record of the wall tie system.
Good news is Murray is hopefull for the steel this week! How exciting is that?
Have spent the last week stripping off the rough cast from what will be the internal wall. What with loosing 25 mm to the insulation on the outside wall I recon to have stolen back 15mm or so in the render.

Being tight I didn't want to waste all these good chippings so I have thrown them in as trench back fill. I recon when  the type1 goes in it will all compact together.
First tool casualty! SDS drill began smoking and grinding! Alas it is no more! I paid £40 for it about 10 years ago so it owes nothing. The new one was £60 though! It will have to last 15 years!