.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Well we are off to a super start. I went over last night and we have tons of sand being pored all over the place. Kate and I stood in the middle of the building envelope and Kate said that last night would be the last time we would ever stand on that ground... A pretty sobering thought!! Campbell the sand man said he should have finished bringing in the 900 tons of sand by Saturday morning, and then Rory the pad man will be smoothing it out and compacting it.
We will be down on the block tomorrow planting our new plants.. Not looking forward to it to be honest - weather is not up to much, but we'll get through it. I wish I had family to call on!!
Anyhoo - enjoy the pics.
Brad
900t of sand? What do you guys load your rigs at? 35t would mean 26 loads of sand?
ReplyDeleteDo you not dig foundations? Sorry in the dark here. I know that in Zim some of the guys used to add a section of topsoil and harden it, throw a slab over that and then build on that. You are obviously following the same method, but just with sand?
Wish I was there to help, but looking at taking the girls to the Virginia air show tomorrow [otherwise may have just popped over for the weekend]
Cheers
Colin
Hey Colin, glad to see you here!! The trucks operate two tipper trailers, each one has twenty cubes of sand and the sand runs at about a ton and a half per cubic meter. The double trailer rig can pull up to 60 Ton, and a tripple road train can do 110 ton.
ReplyDeleteHouses here do not have the traditional foundations that you see in South Africa, but are built on a "Pad". The ground is checked by structural engineers, who decide, based on the soil composition, how deep the pad has to bee. This is to allow the ground to shift naturally, and have minimal effect on the finished house. On top of the pad is a reinforced concrete slab, that is floated on top of the pad. In our case, there are channels cut into the pad, and this makes a lattice of reinforced beams that protrude beneath the slab, into the pad. We had to have this type of pad, as the soil composition on our block contains clay. This means that there may be up to 20mm of movement over the size of our pad as it gets wet, or dry. Our sand is now waiting for compaction, when Rory will get a big ole D( excavator, and even out the snad to a thickness of 800mm, which has to be the finished level, and then he will go over it with a vibrating roller. This will compact it to a point where on e cubic meter will weigh around two tons. Once he has compacted it enough, the structural engineers will come on site and do a point drop test, where they place a bar of a certain thickness vertically on the surface of the pad, and drop a calibrated weight on it. They measure how deep the weight drives the bar, and that gives them a compaction index. Once thay are happy with it, they sign it over to the builder, who then throws the slab.