Concrete Giraffe

Yesterday the foundations were poured for the house. Four rather large concrete trucks arrived each of which holds 9m3 of concrete. Apparently these are in the area to deliver concrete to the local stadium for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. The fourth was a half load and we used 31m3 of concrete in total, but there is a small section of foundation that is outstanding. This had not been prepared so we could provide an access for the concrete trucks to the middle of the site. Nevertheless, it took around 3 hours to vibrate and level the 25MPa concrete. We could have saved around R4000 had we done the mixing manually but this would have taken us four days. Rain was predicted but it turned out to be a stunning cloudless day. Concrete is apparently best cured when it is slightly wet, so it is necessary to spray it with water from time to time. In the late afternoon we went of and purchased some hosepipes in preparation for this. However the rain came in overnight and the entire area was given a good soaking. The timing couldn't have been better and the thunder, lightning and rose quartz crystals will hopefully combine into a good blessing for the times ahead.

Yesterday afternoon Johan and I went to check on the progress Deon has been making with our pan mixer and hoist. We discovered that the bucket would not make it far enough across the form without it hitting the form on the way up so it needed some modifications. Well it now looks like a giraffe and the name has stuck. Giraffe is also quite appropriate as our local soccer stadium is being built in such a way that it looks like a herd of giraffe are supporting the roof. The picture on the right shows a beaded replica of the stadium and if you look carefully, you can see all the giraffe with their heads poking up above the roof. Just to make our giraffe more giraffe-like, I think we may paint it yellow. But whatever the colour, I just hope it will hold it's head up high for the duration of the project because if it's down, it means it's in for repairs.

Steel 'n Rock

Six tons of reinforcing for the foundations arrived on time and in pieces. A crew arrived to assemble it and this was supposed to take five days until complete. We're now ten days into the assembly process and about half way. So we've already lost a week. Each section needs to be tied together with wire and the collection of assembled sections occupied an extraordinary amount of space. Without a doubt, this house will never crack. The foundation footings and beams are substantial. I found the assembly crew had built a fire to burn the coils of wire that they were using to tie the bars. Apparently this makes it 'softer' and easier to work with and I can sympathise with their efforts in this regard. It is quite a task that they were presented and only now do I really appreciate the work that they've done.

Today was spent placing and tying the various sections of reinforcing together in the excavated foundations of the house. The process was fortunately quite painless but there is a degree of urgency. The readymix concrete is arriving tomorrow morning.
Today the engineer came for his final inspection and other than being absolutely stunned by our rammed earth test wall, was quite happy with what he saw. The structural design ignores the rammed earth structural strength completely, but after seeing the wall the engineer agrees that we have somewhat over-designed the structural members. This house will last generations!

We are still busy chipping away at a hard section of rock in the utility building foundation. It's an eight metre section that's valiantly resisting our attempts to break it up but after a week of being subjected to a hydraulic jack hammer, it is nearly all removed. I spoke too soon in an earlier post saying that we had not encountered any problems. But of course problems lie in wait and you only encounter them when you think the worst is behind you. However, hopefully early next week these foundations will be ready with the reinforcing in place for the next batch of concrete.

The rammed earth walls will begin 150mm above ground level. This will avoid any damp issues that may develop by wicking moisture up from the ground. They will be built on a facebrick cladded stem wall which means that two or possibly three rows of facebrick will be visible above ground level. This calls for decorative decision and several facebrick samples have been sitting on our test wall while we have been mulling over our options. The red would go with the red oxide layer and the mottled black with the black oxide layer. The tan would go with the wall and the rough "rock" finish makes it look quite natural. Choices, choices! However the general consensus is the tan colour. The debate that now rages - do we want it rough or do we want it smooth?

Above Ground

Finally we are making some progress that is visible. Up until now the money invested is mostly buried below ground in water, borehole and electrical reticulation. The computer illiterate fireman managed to get someone to tick the online fire approval section in our application and our plans have now been finally passed! The tempo of activity is up quite dramatically and we're set to work flat out with a short break in December. The progress on the foundations has been dramatic. We started on the foundations in late July and today they are compacted and ready for the reinforcing and concrete. On Monday the reinforcing arrives and by Friday, it should be assembled, in place and ready for inspection. Monday week we are hoping to pour the foundations for the house and later that week for the utility building. The ground is generally quite soft and the progress is rapid, which explains why there is so much reinforcing in the foundations. Bar a couple of small really hard spots with rock, there has been little to slow the progress made.

The sieve is in place and we have stacked the soil ready for sieving. However, the sieve aperture size is 10mm and this is producing fairly course material something we don't want. We will replace this with a 6-8mm aperture section and this should address our problems. Surprisingly when you use a manual sieve, it produces a smaller sieved product but this is a result of the angle of the sieve. The effective aperture size of a sieve on a steep gradient is much less than it is when it's horizontal. But this you only realise when you do the field tests.

We have installed a gate, much to the annoyance of our neighbour whose staff cross into our property to access the main road. But there has been quite a bit of pedestrian traffic across the property as it is used as a thoroughfare to cross the river. We are concerned with all the building equipment and materials on site that we will be targeted by the local shoplifting network. So the gate is just a small deterrent. It's in but not yet fully functional.

In the meantime, I have received a sample of the uPVC material that will be used to make the double glazed windows. It was an especially quick and efficient delivery from China and it was more to check the colour than the quality. And it's perfect. The grey layer in the rammed earth complements it perfectly. There is a choice of window components and I'm going with the 'top chinese brand'. I've just included 'internal shutters' which are effectively louvre blinds set between the panes of the double glazing. There is no cleaning of them as they are hermetically sealed. Fantastic. They're controlled using magnets and I'm sure I'm going to get no end of grief from them. But despite this, the total window cost is USD10,000 including the 7m section of hinged panel doors 3.3m in height. I had a local quote just for this door section and it came in at USD8,000. That is only for the folding section which is only 2.4m in height. The 900mm panel above the folding section is an additional cost. Seems the locals just love a good rip off.

The food forest tree list has been finalised and it seems that we will be planting around 590 trees. Now we are waiting for the minimum temperature to hover above 10degrees Celcius and then the planting will begin. Next week has been set aside to get the irrigation fully functional and this should be complete by the end of the week. We've made a small dent in the 30 tons of manure but the farmyard smell still lingers around the site. The frogs and birds have recently gone ballistic with their nest making and calling suggesting that spring has sprung but today we were hit by a cold snap to remind us that winter is not yet over. But the winter of waiting is definitely behind us and there is an invigorated spring in everyone's step.