The inside floor area is going to be backfilled and used as a thermal mass to help regulate the greenhouse temperature. For proper drainage the entire footing area was filled with three-quarter inch washed stone. The 4 inch corrugated pipe worked well getting around all the angles and was connected into the existing drain that was installed before the footings were poured. It’s probably time for some new gloves.Īfter all the water problems in the foundation hole earlier this year, I decided it would be a good investment to install a perimeter footing drain. Total dry weight including the mortar was roughly 17,000 pounds, all moved by hand. When the wall was complete, 512 – 28 pound blocks were set. It probably wasn’t necessary since the entire wall will be buried, but while it is still open, it sure makes it look nice! On average, I was able to set 10 blocks an hour, which includes mixing mortar, cutting, and setting.Īfter the mortar starts to set a little, I would go back and clean up all the joints. Each block is aligned along the row and checked to make sure it was plumb and level. Laying down a good line of mortar is important for setting the block properly. Once I got the first hundred blocks set, I started to get a good feel for laying them efficiently. This is the first time I have ever laid concrete blocks. If it’s too loose, it squeezes out from the blocks, and if it’s too firm, it’s hard to level them properly. It didn’t take very long to realize how important it is to get the right mortar mix. In hind-sight, maybe investing in a mortar mixer would have been a good idea. In total, there were 35 bags mixed by hand. There is enough material to set around 15 to 18 blocks. I used 80 pound bags of ready-mixed mortar. If there wasn’t enough room, I would break off the tabs to shorten each block a bit. After each corner was placed, the middle blocks were added and spaced properly. By dumb-luck, I found if I broke off one tab on each block, they would butt together to make a perfect angle! Roughly 1 out of 4 blocks had to be modified for these corners.Īll the blocks were dry-fit into place before adding mortar. Most of the angles in the dome section are around 24 degrees. None of the corners in the building are 90 degrees. The entire back side of the truck lifts off the ground! Watch carefully as he places this pallet of mortar. Luckily, it was brought in on a truck with a boom so they were able to place everything within the foundation hole. There were over 500 concrete blocks, 1200 bricks, and one and a half tons of ready-mix mortar delivered. In this video, I will show the details about building the foundation frost wall. I'm still hoping to have most of it built before the snow flies! I've made some excellent progress in the last month on the dome! The entire concrete block wall was built and I'm now moving on to some of the heating and plumbing that will be buried under the floor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |