11/04/08

Today we concluded our construction of our monolithic concrete slab formwork. This involved cutting particle boards to three courses high (257mm), cutting strong backs for the formwork, digging a trench for the footings 350mm wide and also hammering in pickets to support the formwork. We also made a small area, by shovelling sand and levelling, which sloped up from the footings trench on an angle of 45 degrees, and eventually reached a pad height that was 100mm below our string lines. This is because the slab was 100mm thick.
By the start of this morning we had half of our formwork up with our trenches dug out and pickets in place, all we had to do was level of our horizontal braces across the pickets and nail them in, then put our last long stretch of formwork ply onto them. The very edge of the formwork ply that was to come into contact with the concrete had to be 160mm away from the string line and we attained this by marking 140mm in from the edge of the horizontal braces and lining that up with the string line.
We got the right level on the pickets for where the top of the horizontal braces would be nailed at by using the dumpy level to mark a uniform height on the pickets. This way the formwork ply would sit at the right level height with the string line.
To finally finish off our formwork ply we had to hammer in a few extra pickets, because our pickets were 2inch by 1inch wood, they would come out of the ground. Once this was done it was strong enough to stand on and so Paul could pass us. After this we dismantled the formwork and also our hurdles trying our best to salvage the longer lengths of timber and also the pickets Daniel cut.
After smoko we then started our test on external cladding. I didn't study for this test and may have failed but i am optimistic that i may have scraped through. I found learning about external cladding a little difficult as there were so many types and each was hard to research on the net because of useless internet sites littering the web. Also i had not previously discovered a site that listed in black and white the standards for fixing certain types of cladding to stud walls, which also made it difficult.
After lunch we then did a calculations test on figuring out the lineal metres of timber cladding required to cover a rectangular room and also how many cement fibre sheets we would need to cover the same room. We then had to figure out how much both types of cladding would cost based on our earlier calculations. I found this test rather easy and also enjoyable as i like to nut out mathematics problems.

Research assignment and Setting out

Yesterday we started off the day with a research assignment on formwork ply and concrete. Formwork ply was very hard to research as there was only sites that wanted to sell the formwork ply and they didn't give a very detailed descriptions on usage, storage and installation processes. I found researching concrete rather interesting, especially looking up reinforcing and the ways in which steel rods in concrete make the concrete stronger. Concrete and steel have the same temperature expansion rate so there is little if any internal stresses, and the alkalinity of concrete due to the lime, slows and even stops steel rusting. Concrete has great compression strength and the steel adds great tensile strength to the concrete allowing arch ways and horizontal beams of reinforced concrete to be utilised.
After this we then moved on to setting out a full scale, albeit, small house plan in the very back area of the Tafe campus, next to the horticulture section. On the first day we managed to assess what tools we needed and carried them out to the site, what timber we would require for stumps and hurldes, and also what house plan we were going to use.
To start off with we measured 90mm off of the existing fence line there and ran a string line parallel with it all the way to the back fence. We then measured 7m in from the back fence, along the string line we just put in place, and then 2m perpendicular inwards from the 7m point and placed a stump. This stump represented the corner of the house. Then we measured exactly 13070mm from that stump, running 2m parallel from the string line, and placed another stump.
As the back existing fence was not 90 degrees with our string line we had to use another method to obtain the two other corner points of the house.
What we did was use pythagoras thereom and used the diagonal or hypotenuse lines and the horizontal lines to form a triangular point of two measurements. The square root of (13070 squared + 16150 squared) = 20776. So we ran a tape off of one existing stump that we knew was right, at a 90 degree angle (roughly) at a distance of 16150, and then ran another tape from the existing corner stump at a distance of 20776. We then moved the two tape measure lines until both the measurements, 20776 and 16150 met each other, and then we banged in a stump. We repeated this process again but using the two existing stumps in the other way. This worked out perfectly and as i was the one who came up with the idea, i felt rather pleased and satisfied with myself.