Progress

This week the reinforcing for the slab has been laid, and the other bits- some termite protection, plastic sheeting, and the cabling for the slab heating. (in an ideal world we would be putting hydronic heating pipes in, but finding an efficacious and affordable way to heat the water was problematic, the best solution being geothermal but at $50K it was slightly beyond our reach).




I must apologise to the earth for the amount of embodied energy in our slab- there is an awful lot of steel in there. However, when armageddon comes and your houses all fall down, you can come and live with us because our house will still be standing.

The non build photo for this post is of a rammed earth wall, (Tim's suggestion), which will be featuring on the southern wall and some internal walls of the house. The walls are built insitu, which poses a slight logistical problem for our flooring. The floor of the house will be polished concrete, and therefore the slab needs to have an as close to perfect as possible finish on it. However to do the rammed earth they need to drive a bobcat around on the slab, which is at odds with having a perfect surface underneath!

The pour for the slab was due to be this week, and then planned for Monday, and has now been postponed. For any of you non-Adelaidians out there, it has been rather hot here with days in the high 30s, rather unseasonable. It is going to stay stinking hot for quite a few days yet, too hot for pouring concrete. Which comes back to the concrete floors- the hotter it is when the concrete is poured the higher the likelihood of cracking in the slab, which is problematic when the slab is visible.

So we are now waiting for the weather to change to allow the concrete to be poured....hopefully soon, I sure am sick of the heat.