Work continued with the ICF walls. The formwork for the window and door openings was put in position and secured with the plastic webbing imbedded the foam.
The braces were also fixed the inside of the walls and screwed to the floor. As the floor was being polished the number of screws in the floor was minimised as much as possible or located under stud walls. In some circumstances, timber was screwed down to areas under stud walls and the braces fixed to the timber. The wall braces also provide plank supports to allow work to be carried out on the upper parts of the walls.
In a previous post the air tightness and thermal bridging of the fireplace was raised as a concern. To minimise the thermal bridging the internal and external fireplaces were constructed as two separate structures with an 80mm gap between the two. Into the gap an Intello membrane was added to ensure the air tightness layer continues past the fireplace. This was embedded into the ICF walls at each end of the fireplace so that a tight join was achieved between the concrete in the ICF and the Intello fabric. On the outside of the Intello 75mm of XPS foam is installed to provide continuous insulation from the ICF --> Fireplace --> ICF.
Below show the Intello in place with the first piece of XPS installed.
The plumbers returned to site to install the sewerage pump tank, grey water system and fix the retaining wall that was undermined by the sewerage tank hole.
They also dug the trench down the slope to the water tank. The power and data cables for the pump and shed were also laid in the trench. The roots from the surrounding trees formed a damaging obstacle course will laying the pipe and conduits. Note the flexible pipe used for the stormwater to be tolerant of any land slip issues over time.
The trench continued past the tank and connect to the legal point of discharge half way along the back fence. The total length of the trench was approximately 70m.
Back on the ICF walls, Intello membrane was sandwiched between the top blocks of the ICF walls. This was done to ensure an airtight connection between the concrete in the walls and the membrane that will be installed under the roof rafters. When the ICF walls are core filled the membrane will be encased in concrete.
On the inside (of the thermal envelope) of the wall the membrane will be folded up and taped to the membrane under the roof.
Some of the wall are ready to be filled.
The short block wall near the Alfresco was completed - also ready to be core filled.
Conduits that are to be imbedded in the wall are sealed to the Intello membrane. In this case the conduit start and finish was within the thermal envelope but due to the way the blocks fell, the membrane was below the top penetration of the conduit and needed to be sealed to the membrane.
Other conduits were embedded into the walls to save chasing the foam later. But as these conduits were in the garage (outside the thermal envelope) they did not need to be sealed.
Finally, after a number of delays the day (Friday 6th Feb) came to core fill the walls. But as the first concrete truck did not arrive until 10.30 and the day was 35 degrees. There were a lot of stress and issues on the day, hence not many photos.
The fireplace was also filled.
After 12 hours on site (6pm), and 8 hours of core filling we had a block blowout, which dumped a cubic meter of concrete on the floor. It would be another three hours before we finished for the day, unfortunately without the job complete and more core filling would be needed on Monday.
