Table formwork.. DONE!

So we're happy that we have completed the table formwork finally. We rather thrilled to not have to work standing in water anymore and confined spaces. Taking out all the wood will be exciting, however that doesn't need to happen for at least two weeks after the concrete pour. Also it can be done in stages since there is no particular rush.

By the afternoon we had moved onto to spreading our steel on top of the formwork. This is a much simpler task then the bottom section of the house with the wire mesh. That whole part of the project would seem to have been the most daunting task thus far.

We lay down the 20 foot sections of #4 (1/2 inch / 12.7mm) rebar. We then trim them off at the ends. The cut off's will be used to make special bends which will attach to all those upright pieces of steel you see. We will bend those down with a pipe tomorrow. Also you can see from the drawings we have some sections with larger bars. These are essentially bridges, what our engineer calls a "two way slab". This is a better design then what we had before which was only thicker steel throughout but no supporting sections like this. Our engineer specified certain large open sections to have these stronger beams inside. This will help carry loads to the walls in the middle of the floor, etc. We have enough extra steel that we have added more then he specified across all big rooms now.

Bridge made out of a ladder and some base slab formwork.

We let the extra hang over and then we trim them to size using the hitachi bender/cutter right in place.

These rebars are bigger then they seem! They are 3/4 inch (19mm) #6 rebars.

These rebars are bigger then they seem! They are 3/4 inch (19mm) #6 rebars.

By the end of the day we had completed all the tabletop formwork as well as one layer of steel. Another layer will come on in the other direction.