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.