A little more activity now the "Silly Season" is over, though the construction industry in Australia winds up slowly!
The starter "C" channels were nailed in position after again checking wall positions and putting down chalk marks - the slab edges were mostly correct but there were a few places, e.g. the edge near the garage door where form work moved during pouring.
Holes for starter bars were drilled in the slab and the bars were "chemset" into position.
Once the "C" channels were in place the first blocks could be laid in position.
The corners are preformed and have additional insulation on the outside corner. The helps with geometric thermal bridges - a nice little feature of ICF. Also, an engineering requirement was to have reinforcing steel horizontally at 400mm centres. The ICF blocks used in the project have a vertical height of 400 so steel is laid on the clips which hold both pieces of the ICF together.
One issues was what to do with the ICF wall over the construction joints in the slab. While engineering called for and expansion joint it did not detail how to achieve it. The ICF company had not come across expansion joints before as the ICF walls are usually poured in one section.
The solution was to put a concrete cement sheet with lagging attached to one side directly over the construction joint. As this would create a wall without continuous steel reinforcement, dowels were placed in the wall horizontally with one side taped up to allow for a sleeve to be produced when the ICF concrete had cured. Since there is a possibility of exposure to air the dowels were galvanised.
Of course, this produces a potential air leak and the Intello membrane should have been applied to the joint - unfortunately, this was missed at the time of the pour and will need to be retrofitted later in the build. - don't forget!
Untaped end of dowel
Taped end of dowel
Work commenced on the Block fireplace - see later posts for how insulation and air tightness was achieved.
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