Posts placement..

So we were out this morning trying our posts. We wanted to see if the orientation was good or not for our posts. The welds were complicated angles. So after setting them all up, the welders had made a mistake only on one. Its not a big issue since we will just rotate it a little and it will be inside our wall and no one will see it. However instead of 55 degree's it is only 30 degree's probably. We pulled a string our to see line up our orientation. The plan is to align them exactly using a string and then just mark where we need to drill our 5/6 inch holes in the concrete. Drill our holes then move the most back and bolt them down. The crane will lift the wood beams in place.

The back edge should be parallel with the concrete.

The back edge should be parallel with the concrete.

Posts where our kitchen will be.

The back edge should be parallel with the concrete.

All three kitchen/bathroom posts.

Comparing how the posts looks against a 2x6 beam, it will cover it up without any issue.

We will need to re-drill one of the holes.

Gluing..

So as you can see we are gluing / glued the plywood together. Some pictures below of what we are doing is seen and a video. I bought a nice compressed air powered caulking gun which really is a pleasure to use.

You can see a whole wall section here. 4 of these plywoods are meant for the top and 2 are meant for the bottom. This gives the required strength and width.

Already glued sections.

We're using what we've used before, PL Premium by Loctite company. Once glued, it tears the wood apart its so strong. We use that with many nails and screws.

Nail into steel.. first test..

Since we will be using our ramset tool to hold things into steel I am running some initial tests. For the layman it looks like this is a crazy thing to do, to shoot nails into steel. But this is what this tool was invented for actually, the use in concrete came later. I tried with the strongest power shot which as you can see is too much because it over drove the head of the nail.

Round walls..

So we began to build our round wall sections today. Since we don't knowhow high our walls will be exactly, we are building the bottom plate and top plate. By building code you need 1 1/2 inch of wood on the bottom and 3 inch of wood on the top. Since you can't easily bend wood, the solution is to laminate some plywood together to achieve this thickness.

Our bosch jigsaw working very nicely.

Completed 8 foot section.

Painting posts..

The posts are finally done and painted. The paint dries quite fast. It has a grey colour since its content is 95% zinc. We cleaned all the steel with acetone to remove any grease our oily residue. Then we used a regular brush to apply a thick coat of galvanization paint.

Our painting station inside our rental home's garage.

Bottom of the base plates.

We extended our work area of our ponies with some 2x4 material and a clamp.

Finished & painted posts.

Drilling holes...

Here you can see us drilling the holes in our posts. These are required to hold our lumber in place. The front wood beam will be 14 inch's (35.5cm) while the back will be 9 1/2 inch's (24cm). Next is to paint them with our special cold galvanization paint.

5 holes for all the regular post tops, bolts will be 3/8 inch (9.5 mm)

Clamps to stabilize the whole thing while drilling.

I guess nothing is made in USA anymore?

Steel posts..

Here are the steel posts we have brought home today. We will be drilling the top support plates out with 5 holes (3/8 inch size) as well as painting them with our special cold galvanization paint.

They welded the holes shut on top of the post nicely for us.

Base plate + column + top cap...

So we went to pickup our steel columns today as well as our top caps which will hold the wood beam. We took it from Hilo Steelworks directly almost across the street to Aloha Machine & Weld. Hilo Steelworks is odd in that part of the building is a macadamia nut processing factory. The Aloha Machine & Weld is also little funny. If you notice in the streets view picture I provided above you can see that half the machine shop is entirely open to the open air. This sort of thing would not be possible in Toronto or elsewhere where there is winter. Here its very pleasant weather all year around and having an open shop is a ideal solution I think.

The Aloha Machine & Weld tell me the columns will be done tomorrow. So we will pick them up, drill holes in the top plate for our bolts and then paint them with our special cold galvanization paint. This paint is very odd, its a small paint can but weighs 6 lbs / 2.8 kg. It has 95% zinc content and is likely the cause of the weight.

We have been reviewing the wood wall drawings and we're in for quite a challenge it seems.

Franken-style..

A new term coined by my girl friend. My friend Jim in ocean view called our concrete monster "Frankenstein" however my girl friend thought "Franken-style" was more appropriate.

Anyway, here are some better pictures of the formwork removed from the outside.

Plenty of albezia seeds falling from our neighbour tree's as you can see.

Baseplate drilling..

Here you can see how we're drilling the holes needed in our baseplate for our steel support columns. They took about 1 minute per hole. The base plate is 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) thick. The screw holes drilled are slightly larger then 5/8 inch (15.9 mm) so as to have an easy fit for the screw we will use. We have four holes in the plate which should provide plenty of holding power when bolted down with the special anchor bolts.

Wall formwork final take off..

We finally removed the final pieces of the outside wall formwork. The results look good and we have something that looks solid indeed, even looking at it as layman. A little piece of wood formwork remains where we will pour concrete to inclose our hole where eventfully our trap door will be.

You can see our two overflow pipes as well as our tank drain here.

The scrap wall formwork which we will use on the side of the house and the roof of course.

Round walls turned out fabulous.

The will be our bathroom above and our utility room underneath. It will house the pipe and filters for our water tank.

Wall formwork

So we are back from our little mini vacation and at it again. We began removing some of the wall formwork from the outside walls. The results look good and I'll have some pictures soon. We haven't ventured under the slab top yet, however it now echoes when you speak under it, likely from all the concrete.

We are in the process of chasing down the steel columns that we need to hold up our roof support. There is one company on this island which stocks what we need. We got some quotes to weld and drill some holes in this material and it's all over is place. These people have wild pricing. What would cost $500 in Toronto costs $1000 to $2300 here.

So we will be reducing the cost by doing some work ourselves. We will have someone weld the material but drill the holes ourselves on site.

I'll have an update on this when I have more to say and show. Likely we will buy a drill press and do our own holes today. Then hand it to someone to weld together.


- Posted from my iPad 3G

Beach and nothing but beach...

So no postings for a couple of days now. We are taking a couple of days off on the sunny side of the island. We need the rest for sure. Here it rains only 2cm per year. Where our property is we get 363 cm per year. As you can see from the pictures this island even gets snow on top of mauna kea. I is about 4600 meters high.

Meanwhile I'm working on ordering our skylights and our engineer is calculating the steel supports and beam. It looks like we will use steel main support beams to hold the roof up. It's cheaper then doing it from wood because you can use much less steel to off set the wood we would need.




Pictures from Wikipedia.



Pictures from Wikipedia.



Pictures from Wikipedia.
- Posted from my iPad 3G

Location:Waikiloa village

Final concrete video..

Here is a quick summary video for everyone to enjoy. We're done with concrete for a long while I hope.

Final concrete!

So here you have the final concrete pictures of the day. The whole thing went off without a hitch or worry. I'm happy about that. The two finishing guys are still out there finalizing the surface for us since this will be our house floor. My dad ran the vibrator again and I was holding the machine in my hand and extension cord walking behind him. Our formwork so far has held up without issue also. I'll have more pictures later tonight.

We call it quits now for a couple of days since we don't want to scratch up the floor badly. More info and pictures later.

Before bull floating the entire thing. 

After bull floating the entire thing.

Finalizing video..

Here is a sum up video of all the days events. I'm going to be quite happy to not have to bend or see rebar anymore. You can see me bending over the vertical rebars which came up out of the wall. My dad's cutting #6 (3/4 inch ) rebar, etc. Enjoy!