We've Been Framed!

The frames have arrived, we are now ready for the next step, we will start putting them up, starting on Friday.
The way I have designed the house is to take advantage of being able to get the difficult stuff prefabricated off-site.
'My self-designed kitset home.'
Mrs DIY is taking a weeks 'holiday' to give me a hand, we hope to have the entire frame up within the next week.
We have not put them (frame's) on the slab because the concrete needs to cure for as long as possible to get to it's full strength.
This will reduce the chance of any serious cracking, as we are going to polish the slab, we won't be able to cover any blemishes with carpet.
The roof trusses are also ready but I have put off delivery for a week to clear some space (they take up quite a bit of room) and also they are quite heavy, I will need them close by eliminating the need to manhandle them around the site.
the next few weeks are going to be busy.
The long term weather looks OK for now.

Concrete Foundations

Monday dawned a beatiful day, perfect concrete weather, the concrete arrived on time at 7.00am and by 11.00am it was all in place

What a stressful time, I had the terrible feeling that I didn't put enough bracing and the whole thing would collapse and all the cement would run out.

It didn't.

As I blog the men are power floating the surface and adding colour hardener to get the perfect smoooooopth finish.

The frames are due to be delivered later this week so we will be able to get on with the easy bit of the build.

Contractors

Well what can I say, the concrete contractor didn't show, Mrs DIY is now very grumpy, told me I was to nice to them.
Thankfully it has started to rain so it probably been not a good idea to place concrete in the rain, maybe it was a good call after-all.

Passed

The building inspector passed the foundation, we are now ready for the 'big pour' that's if it stops raining (pouring?).
It looks like it will be fine tomorrow, you can just see some bits of blue sky in the far distance.

The Big Steel

The steel is now in place, thanks to my team of helpers, who without, we would still be fixing it in place - a heavy dangerous job, well done. (The Diploma is in the post)
That white stuff underneath the steel is 40mm polystyrene thermal insulation.
The next step is to get the building inspector to give it his seal of approval.
Because of the great progress over the weekend I was able to take a half day off on Monday to pick my sister up from the airport, (she's making a flying visit from Perth for our fathers 91'st birthday) and deliver her to Waikanae.

Foundations 101

Moving right along, the foundation base is complete, the steel has arrived and the underfloor insulation has been delivered and the concrete pour is booked for next Friday.

The good bit is we are expecting one of our children together with partner for the weekend - guess what they will will be doing?

They will be just in time to take part in the short course I'm conducting in fixing foundation steel for a single story timber construction, based on NZ Standard 3604, aren't they lucky!

Mud, Mud and more Mud

Dave the digger man has excavated the foundations, and now we have a pile of Mud (dirt), maybe we could sell it as a DIY Cricket pitch (family Joke).
It has been raining solidly for the past 2 days and now everything is waterlogged, however the plumber was able to install the under slab piping.
When the the rain stops I will finish off the foundations, hopefully we could be able to pour (place) the concrete next week subject to weather and approval by the building inspector.

Foundations

The building has started with the foundation base filled with crushed metal (stones), levelled and compacted, it's very hard to see but the site has a slope towards the East so we had to put a lot of extra fill to build it up to the correct level.

The weather has been really bad, rain, hail, wind and snow, the only thing we didn't get was locusts and pestilence...

Our big tank arrived last night, so we have another challenge of moving it around to the back of the site and putting it in a hole so the water will be able to fill it to the top.

Yes I made an error in my calculations and didn't take into account the height between the space between the edge of the roof and the top of the tank -oh bother! and other words like that.

It's dawned a beautiful day, so I should be able to finish of the foundation form-work, so we will be able to sort out were we will put the pipes under the concrete slab, you only get one chance of getting this part of the build correct..

RIP

Today I accidentally washed my cell phone, it didn't seem to like the heavy duty cycle on the washing machine, I even put in some fabric conditioner.

It has been blow dried but it still refuses to come back to life.

It's very clean...

Starting the Dig

Today it is planned for the digger man to start the excavations, first he will have to scape the site of all the topsoil, then I will be able to construct the boxing ready for the concrete foundation to be poured (placed?).

This time I am going to increase the pops required to 600mm centres rather than the 1200mm recommended, this will make sure there's no movement.