Progress Update - Week 7

This week marks the end of our official class session. Sam, Sahar, and Sarah have to leave to return to real life while Brad, Chris, Ariel, Marc and Anthony trudge on. The looming deadline made us all work double-time despite the 90+ heat. The beginning of the week was dedicated to finishing the footings and piers. While others worked on squaring out the footing holes and adding formwork, Ariel and Sarah got to hone their “rod busting” skills. To tie the rebar together you use a special curved hook tool, Sarah says “It’s kind of like crocheting wire”. After the horizontal and verticals were set up they were placed in the footing holes and tied together. The vertical rebar was adjusted as needed to get it in the right column location, the Sono-Tubes have to fit around the rebar and the whole thing has to be about right, only 1” of wiggle room. That all was Monday, we quit at 2:00 because it was climbing into the mid 90s.

Ariel putting together the horizontal rebar

The special hook used to tie rebar together with wire

Chris adding the wood spacer to the vertical rebar

Setting form-work into the footing hole. When Brad dug them out with the backhoe the holes got sloppy, but is saved us so much time.

Horizontal rebar in the footing hole, they sit on plastic "chairs" to keep them off the ground.

On Tuesday the cement truck arrived, for the entire morning it was pure ciaos. All 9 of us were involved, Sam directing the shoot, Marc, Chris, and Anthony pulling the concrete down the shoot, Sarah and Ariel tamping, and Sarah floating. Brad, Paul, and the driver Rich worked out a hand single system after the first few pours. It took about 1.5 hours to fill all 16 footings. After that we covered the whole site and went home after a very satisfying day. 

Poured footing with vertical rebar

All 16 footings poured in one morning!

Wednesday and Thursday we worked on the piers, setting the Sono Tubes, mixing concrete, pouring, and then setting the bolts for the post brackets. Again we worked as one big team, each person with their job. We affectionately call this “blob-ing,” when we all work on one task at the same time, like a blob that engulfs and destroys, then we finish the task in no time.

We mixed the pier concrete ourselves since there wasn't enough for a truck.

Our solution to the water source problem, dont drink it though, Ariel says it's spicy

Pier with post bolt, none of them were in the center, but at least close enough

 On Friday we worked on loose ends, we did some design detail work for the window openings and the foundation wall cap, we finished processing the sub floor material, and set up one column on our newly make piers. There was a brief rain storm in the morning, we all refused to leave our work stations will it really got bad, then we huddled under our shade tarp until it became apparent that the storm was not going the let up. Eventually we were able to get back to work.

Gabion detail

Gabion prototype

Brick foundation wall detail for the corner

Rained out Friday morning

Sahar chiseling out the column so it fits in the post bracket.

It fits!

One column up!

It’s been difficult to accept the fact that more of this project can’t be completes while we are all here, but knowing that there are so many people are committed to its completion is comforting.

revised model to remind us of the future.