Strings and boxing
November 23rd, 2007 - Posted in eco-building - by Sarah|
Well, after another hard but satisfying couple of day’s work we’ve got a large wooden rectangle sitting on our building platform.
Complete boxing for our garage and workshop.
The first step after setting up our batter boards was attaching 2 strings at each corner that would show the full rectangular outline of the building footprint.
Foundation strings.
We set the strings to be 20mm above the height of our future floor level of 320mm. This meant that as we put the boxing up around the sides we had to ensure that the tops of the boards were 20mm below the string. The inside top edge also had to be exactly level with the string.
Matching the board edges to the strings.
As if that wasn’t complicated enough we also had to constantly check that the boards were plumb (ie accurately vertical) . Once we had checked each section of the boxing we quickly fixed it in place using props and pegs.
As you can see, on the right we have a row of pegs with 2 props, one attached to the top of the board and one to the bottom. These hold the board plum and level with the string. Every other peg has another one set closer to the boxing. This holds the boards in place vertically (ie exactly 20mm below the string). As you can work out, each of the 32 props has either 2 or 3 screws in it and it has been putting these in that has proved to be the most challenging part so far. We have gone through 8 screwdriver bits and the odd swearword. The boards are also screwed to each other at the corners and every join has a backing piece screwed to it to keep the edges aligned.
We’ll continue to work over the weekend so will be able to update you on the exciting next steps soon.
Getting off the ground at last
November 18th, 2007 - Posted in eco-building - by Sarah|
We have finally made some progress towards our workshop/garage. Before we could set up the boxing for the floor slab we had to dig a trench for a drain around two sides. This ensures that surface water doesn’t run across the building site and will eventually be connected to our stormwater drain and the overflow from our 25,000 litre water tank too.
The trench is about 300mm deep at the shallow end and slopes down 1 in 100.  Along the bottom we have put a thin layer of 19mm screened gravel before laying the Drainaway which is 100mm corrugated polyethylene with slits in that allow water into the pipe. Then we’ve filled the trench with more gravel and hey presto – a drain! We had the design and labour checked out by a neighbour who has just retired from 30 years of work as a building and drainage inspector and he gave us the thumbs up so we can now go ahead with the next steps.
The first step in building is called laying out.  This is the process of marking the corners of your building footprint and ensuring it is in the right place. We managed this without too much hassle (the building site is so small that that house and workshop can only really go in one place). Then we got out our water level or bunyip and, after hammering 3 pegs into the ground about 900mm from each corner we marked our floor level (+20mm) and attached batter boards.
Hope that you’re all impressed by our “builder speak”! We have got all the timber we need to complete the boxing on site so hope to be able to update our weblog with lots more progress in the next few days.
