Ground floor beams poured

All of the concrete for the ground floor beams was poured today.

Somehow, when you just have the floor plan of a house marked out on the ground, it always appears much smaller than when the house is completed.  With this house, even when the columns went up you still could not get a real sense of the size and it is only now that the ground floor beams have been cast that you can start to appreciate the scale.

Pouring the ground floor beams Pouring the ground floor beams

A lot of progress with the ground floor beam structure

It seems to have been a very productive day today, with the basic beam structure for the ground floor laid out. Tomorrow, additional steel re-enforcement will be added in areas where greater loads are to be carried. There are also addition beam structures to be added between the primary beams.

Result of a days work installing beam re-enforcement structure Result of a days work installing beam re-enforcement structure

Additional beam re-enforcement added in high stress areas Additional beam re-enforcement added in high stress areas - in this case where an additional beam is to be connected in the area around the staircase structure

First beam re-enforcement structure fitted

The guys working on the site have been very hard working from the very start of the project, but I was surprised to see so much progress had been made since last night, when I visited the site this morning. The re-enforcement structure for the first of the ground floor beams was being fitted. This had involved a huge amount preliminary work in cutting and shaping the hundreds of pieces of steel re-bar that make up the structure.

Completion of first stage columns

The rest of the first stage columns were poured today. The shuttering was removed from those poured yesterday and the holes in which they stand filled in.  We also took delivery of more materials in preparation for construction of the ground floor support beams.

First stage column casting First stage column with concrete set and shuttering removed

Filling in the footing holes Filling in the footing holes

First ten footing holes filled First ten footing holes filled

Another 3 tonnes of steel arrives ready for beam construction Another 3 tonnes of steel arrives ready for beam construction