Blog

Hello fellow builders,

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After we finished putting up the forms for the lintels, it was time to make the final preparations and load them up with concrete.

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Opyo and Murafu are setting the forms for the lintels, which need to be exactly 200 mm when they are finished.

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Opyo anchors a length of binding wire to one side with a nail and then stretches it tightly over the top of the form and nails it to the other side, ensuring that the form will remain constant at the top as  well as the sides and bottom. He puts the wires every three feet or so.

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Murafu keeps it all honest with his measuring guide, cut just a couple millimeters short of 200 to allow for the slight expansion when the weight of the concrete is added and vibrated.

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It looks like this when it’s ready to go.

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The inside of the boards is painted with used motor oil, and all that remains is to pour some water in the form too moisten it,

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and then it’s time for the concrete, mixed in a 1 – 2 – 3 ratio. 1 part cement, 2 parts sand, 3 parts ballast, to be poured into wheelbarrows,

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wheeled into place and shoveled into karais, large, shallow metal dishes,

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and handed up and dumped into the form.

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Then vibrated with our probe vibrator

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to get all the air pockets out.

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You know that that’s happened when the liquid

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starts seeping out the small openings between the boards.

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Then a straight   1×2 starts slapping and scraping the concrete until it is straight and flat and

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ready to have the ring beam framed and poured right on top of it.

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I went by the butchery just before lunch and got two kilos of meat to add to lunch, which has gotten to be a small tradition on days we pour concrete.

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What’s really missing from these photos is the communication of the controlled frenzy of the work. The speed, and after fifteen minutes or so, the smooth coordination of the effort. Guys are flying around with wheelbarrows full of newly mixed concrete, others shoveling it into karais just tossed down from the forms and filled in three seconds with two shovelsful and back up again. Even the skill of two shovels emptying the same wheelbarrow, the subtle, unspoken shift in scooping strokes that leave it better for the next shovel is efficient and neighborly and artful. It has a sports-like joy to it, part man, part boy, part teammate.

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What remains is the lintels’ job, to solidify and harden around the steel and get themselves ready to bear the weight of all above them. Little Atlases each one of them, strong and happy to be there, holding things up, for a long  time. We should be so reliable.

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We finished up the lintels a few days ago, I just haven’t had the chance to show you until now.

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With more news soon,

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David

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PS:  I finally got smart, after wrecking a couple of cameras here, listened to a friend (thanks, Dan) and got a waterproof one. The waterproof also, naturally, means dust and dirt and concrete and everything else proof. So now I reach for it without much thought for the always bad conditions and blast away. So far so good.