and today i have mostly been...

[steve_earwig]

[steve_earwig]

Max just sent me this:

No, it's not Scooter (too thin for a start ). Can you imagine how long this would last? All it needs is for one cat/dog/child with balloon/Martian/invisible monster to go past out front and those tools would be everywhere...

Nice pic tho.

[lozz]

Max just sent me this:

No, it's not Scooter (too thin for a start ). Can you imagine how long this would last? All it needs is for one cat/dog/child with balloon/Martian/invisible monster to go past out front and those tools would be everywhere...

Nice pic tho.

That's cool..

[steve_earwig]

...helping t'wfe's mate's other half Miloš destroy the top half of the stairs here. The plan is to make some more rooms up there but the stairs are too close to the roof beams (possibly due to the bungalow originally being designed as a normal 2-storey house). The stairs turn 180 dgerees half-way up and the idea is to double the width of the middle step, so everything further up is one step lower than it was. The construction of the stairs is quite typical here, they do love their concrete.

























The room underneath is the pantry, the contents of which are now in my bedroom (perfect for midnight snacks...) Digging for the door




All the rubble is outside in a neighbour's trailer, probably about a meter's worth. The tyres on it have gone flat...

Had quite a laugh today, even though Miloš doesn't speak a word of English.

Tomorrow he's bringing some acros as he needs to cut into the ceiling/floor for the top step. This could be interesting...

[Welly]

That's the sort of job you can think about for years but never know how it'll go until you start on it. Seems the house is built like a brick sh....well you know. If the top floor doesn't fall into the Kitchen today then I reckon you're doing ok

[steve_earwig]

The floor/ceiling is 7" thick, with not one, not two but three lots of steel mesh reinforcing (and above that is 2" or polystyrene insulation and another 3" of concrete). They're designed to be pretty much earthquake proof but I can't help feeling that if there's a severe earthquake we'd end up looking like a jam sandwich...





Miloš is now through to the board atop the acros there and reckons he needs to go 4" further down the wall. How he plans to keep it all up once he's done I've no idea...

[steve_earwig]

Oh, not to worry, apparently the deck is so damn massive it won't go anywhere and he's only using the acros to minimise mess. Well, that's ok then, I'll have no trouble sleeping in my room which is right next to it

[Doggy]

Is that one of those, "sympathetic conversions", they talk about on posh programmes?

[steve_earwig]

More like redesigning with extreme prejudice...

I was out playing "broken vintage tractors are made out of unobtanium" this afternoon but he's drawn the steps in on the wall (sorry Miloš but that only works in cartoons). [incredulous mode]He reckons they pour the complete staircase all in one go [/incredulous mode] All I can think about is the incredible pressure the bottom step must be under, I just wonder how often the forms let go and the concrete pours out like a porridge flood across the floor.

[Welly]

I just wonder how often the forms let go and the concrete pours out like a porridge flood across the floor.

Reminds me of a construction project in the 90's........a large building was being built next to the outside wall of a guys flat forming a cavity between the flat and the new building...which they needed to fill with concrete to support the steelwork etc.....they began pouring and all was fine until the fireplace of the flat caved in under the pressure behind and filled the flat

[Doggy]

It'll be fine.

Mind you I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to strike the shuttering - maybe sand it down and varnish it instead?

[steve_earwig]

There'll be steel reinforced concrete on the other side of it...

We've just been told not to use the stairs for 2 weeks after it's poured. How the feck are we meant to get in the loft, leave a window open and use a ladder?

Shuttering (for the underside so far)
















It all seems a bit excessive to me, I'd have just used one sheet and stuff how thick it got but Miloš points out that it could end up massively too heavy and waste a hell of a lot of concrete. Oh, and I know it would be so much easier/better using ply but it's hard to get hold of here and an 8x4 sheet of half inch costs about 100 quid. I kid you not.

[steve_earwig]

A couple of other things today, my old rubble vacuum cleaner (the big metal one I found in a cupboard at work about 20 years ago) crapped out, it's done sterling service, despite all the abuse. I took it to the small motor guy in town here last year because the motor sounded a bit off but he reckoned it's fine. Well, it aint fine now! Grinds it does. I had another motor hanging about that came out of some POS we bought from Lidl (who'd have thought?) so I bunged that in, Unfortunately it had 4 connections, none of which looked used. So I wired it up like the other one, which has the connectors doing both the brushes and the field coils. Put it together, fired it up and... Hmmm, it's a bit slow but if it works then... hold on, why is there light shining from inside? Then the main breaker tripped. Oops, I let the smoke out I'll have to see if the small motor guy can fix it. I'm loath to replace it as anything like it now has what looks like a car air filter in it which doesn't look like it'll take much washing, whereas this is like a cloth bag and has suffered all sorts of abuse, I even use it to clean the chimney.

The other thing was the postman came with some new pressies for me from Hong Kong - hooray! Our postie rides a little Tomos moped up and down the village and it's a good job too because today he wouldn't have been able to stand up without it, he was so drunk. As it was he was swaying from side to side. "Pleash shign, errr, here."

[steve_earwig]

First thing this morning

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!! The house will fall down! Er no, it won't. As has been pointed out to me, houses here are built from these silly pottery bricks but a frame is made around them using steel reinforced concrete. If you knock a wall out of a UK house it'll probably fall down, but these houses, if you remove all 4 walls (in theory) they'll stay up.

Shuttering.

It's a bit council estate to me but this was my suggestion right from the start, the only way I could think to lower the steps up there and leave them wide enough to still be useful.

These are interesting:



He's using these to hold up the side of the form there and I reckon it shows how Croatian builders don't trust these pottery bricks for anything.

On the one side is a bit with a wedge, you take a steel wire (I measured it at 6.85mm with my shiny new Chinese vernier gauge ) and use the wedge to trap it in the clamp:


On the other the wire goes through it and then you use a special spanner (which is a tube with a knurled snail to pull on the wire and a big knob on the end to wind the snail up) to tighten it all up and then you hammer the wedge in to trap it:


Reinforcing going back:


This also shows the lack of faith with the bricks:

the board at the back there is actually hanging off the roof beams, it's only pinned in one place at the top, into the concrete deck (I see they trust that one)

More reinforcing:


Here come the steps:








That's it for today. I guess he must be almost ready for the pour.

I did ask Miloš to explain how the pour works but it got a bit tricky with the language so we decided I'd see it when it happened. I was expecting him to make tops to the steps and pour it all in from the top but I'm beginning to suspect that maybe all my ideas are actually misconceptions and the concrete won't end up everywhere. Time will tell I guess.

Btw I asked Miloš how many set of these he's done, hundreds apparently, and many far more complicated with multiple turns and all sorts: so I guess we're in safe hands. Hopefully.

[lozz]

That's some amazing building work..