By popular demand, a photo of me in front of the foundation as it is. As you can see I'm wearing my "boss" hat, keeps the sun off my neck and the crew in line. We're getting close to the pour. I just can't wait. It's taken a lot longer than I anticipated but it will be well worth it. I got a quote of $4600 to lay the steel over a three day period. Said, "No thanks, I'll do it myself." Me and "Red", a hired hand, have it almost finished in about five days for under $300.
We had to bend squares of rebar and tie them to horizontally run 20 ft. rebar "sticks", 3 on top/ 3 on bottom. Rebar is made from mild steel and provides tensile strength, which is resistance to pulling apart. Concrete has great compression strength but little tensile strength. By embedding steel in the concrete you get both. When we finish putting steel in the beams we'll lay a grid of rebar on top with sticks spaced 18" apart and tied together with wire.
This is closer view of the cages in the beams. The plastic is there to keep the concrete from drying too quickly. The longer it takes for the concrete to set the stronger it will be. The rebar is tied together with wires that are cut to 5" length and have loops on each end. We use a tool called a "pigtail" that hooks into the two loops, then you pull and spin the tool and it twists the wires. Some of the squares were cut and bent by us, others were bought pre-bent. About 1/2 of 'em.
THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS !!! KEEP 'EM COMIN' !!
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For the love of god man, put the clothes back on !!!!!!!! enough already, frightened the neighbours if you had any!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, now it's coming together and starting to look like a house, really impressed with what is a major project, and everyone managed to keep their clothes on in the pics!!!!
Doing o good job there Phil i reckon you should have the roof on by Christmas if you stop all the posing !!