With the waterproofing "sandwich" successfully installed it was time to
mark out the position of the major supporting beams (approx 60-80
cm thick). These beams, to be cast in strongly reinforced concrete were
essential to distribute the weight of the finished earth sheltered
house across the hillside, to prevent the whole structure sliding down
the steep slope and to form the basis of the earthquake proofing
required by the planners. Having experienced earthquakes previously in
the South Pacific and, to a lesser extent and magnitude, in Crete this
seemed like a good idea!
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| Marking out. |
A team of reinforcing specialists arrived on site and whilst the marking
out continued proceeded to assemble the reinforcing bars and cages into
the specified designs and laying out the basic structure of the main
beams.
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| Putting together the reinforcing "cages". |
The team were also marking out where the reinforcing was required
throughout the building. The engineers had devised a complex design and
specification that addressed my joint needs for open spaces, high
thermal mass and earth sheltering which, taken together, significantly
increased the weight of the structure.
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| The reinforcing for the main "beams" starts to be set out. |
As the reinforcing team continued to set out the metalwork the building
team started putting up the major shuttering for the external walls.
Once
the metal work was in place for the beams the usual procedure is to fix
shuttering in place, cast the concrete beams, remove the shuttering and
then fill the spaces with soil. It was decided that by using blocks of
expanded polystyrene to fill the spaces instead of soil a lot of time
and labour could be saved making it cost neutral.
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| The principal reinforcing and the polystyrene in-fill shuttering in place. |
