Laying the foundation blocks

After the footings were poured and dried, Adam and his Dad laid the blocks around the perimeter of what will be the slab - this took a couple of weeks in total as it fell over the Christmas/New Year period and we were all a bit busy having fun!

If you'll recall a few posts back, I mentioned that it rained quite heavily a LOT over Christmas time, which also slowed progress, and made for some pretty muddy footprints through my house. There were also quite a few 5am starts during this stage in an attempt to knock over a few hours of work before the heat kicked in... so again, I missed most of it.

I got Adam to email me the info about what materials were used and what they actually did. I thought he explained it so well that I'd go right ahead and just copy and paste it in here and leave it alone. So, here you go...

Adam:
The foundation blocks are standard 390mm x 190mm x 190mm concrete blocks. When you add 10mm of mortar it makes them 400mm units. Which is why the dimensions of the studio and locations of doors & windows are divisible by 0.4m. There were about 320 of them. We laid them the standard way with a mortar mix of 1:4 cement:sand. The ones on the top row are called "cleanout blocks". They're the form work for the slab - concrete for the slab will pour into them and lock it all together.

Me again! I have attached some photos of the blocks being laid at various points in time - not super interesting to look at, but exciting for us because finally we're building upward!

And this last one, for good measure. This is Adam working in a torrential downpour. You can't tell by this photo, but it was pi*%ing down! No rest for the wicked (or clinically insane!)