18 June 2006

Building The Basement




Its May 2006 and it has been alot of hard work to get to this stage. It was a huge job digging out the hole for the basement and then erecting all the retaining walls. We are now building up the block walls. The exterior walls are 200mm core filled concrete blocks. On the outside of this wall there is 100mm limestone wall. Horizontal rebar reinforcing had to be laid every 400mm and the vertical reinforcing every 200mm. This stage of building is in the middle of winter so subsequently I had to pump a fair amount of water out of the basement on a regular basis.

Once all the masonry work was done I had to "tank" the walls with a bitumin sealer. This was then covered with a plastic protector board and then finally all that was covered with a plastic membrane. Ag drains were put around the exterior walls and then backfilled with gravel. Once the steel I beams were in it was time to lay the bondek & steel reinforcing. Finally ready to pour the main house slab.