Crankin'!

Greetings & welcome to the more in-depth (as deep as a simpleton can provide) details on specific processes and aspects of the AltShift NZ home build.  This blog is mostly for personal record/tab keeping on the project's development, but is also for those people who are looking for greater details of the methods employed in the project's different stages.  We will update this blog every Sunday and recap what activities took place during the previous week. 

So closes the first week of construction at 97 Kings Dr. and gee willikers has it had a good clip to it.  Starting Tuesday with digging the trenches out for the exterior wall footings and getting all the profiles properly oriented (a profile is a leveled up and exactly measured guide post which allows for the stretching of strings between two profiles for a true visualization of where walls will be according to the plans), the race was on.  The trenches were dug to various depths depending on the wall type to be placed upon it.  After the digger did most of the heavy work, we then went through-with the help of the guide lines off the profiles and a lazer level-and double checked the widths and depths of the trenches and touched them up as necessary.  To get a specific height & clean exterior face above grade, 'shutters' were employed to corral the cement.  In order to create a thermal break and waterproof membrane, bitumen was then nailed onto the shudders.  After dropping steel reinforcement 'cages' into the bottoms of the trenches (to provide tensile strength and hold the concrete together), a concrete pump and truck came in to fill it all in.  Within the hour, the mixer/truck had emptied its contents through the pump and laid the foundations.  Again using the lazer level (aka dumpy), heights of the poured crete were taken along the top and adjusted to be perfectly level.  
Along with all the pouring for the master bedroom, we cut and bent hundreds of pieces of rebar sections for the cages to go in the trenches for the main area of the home which will be poured tomorrow.  Any further questions can be sent to altshiftnz@gamil.com.  Til next time,