[Progress.030] How long do we have to wait?

After last Saturday's (11/8) slab work been done, we haven't seen any activities on our site. When I took the following photos on Tuesday (14/8) morning, the rain has just stopped and there were lots of puddles on the slab. I hope that doesn't mean the surface is not flat...

The weather has been a bit unstable in the past few days, hope that would help the slab to cure slowly...

We visited another construction site at Eastwood last week, also by our builder . They already have their slab done, so they should be about 1 or 2 weeks ahead of us. That's good as that site is quite close to ours and the supervisor won't need to travel long distance, and hopefully would pay more attention to this area.

As shown in the following photo, what I mentioned the other day about the 4 drainage pipes for powder room was incorrect. Only 3 are for the powder room, the left hand side one is for the water tank.

Only thing we noticed this week was, a big truck stopped by on Monday (13/8) to pick up all the remaining Waffle pods. They left a big steel mesh and a few bags of bar chairs behind. And there was rubbish everywhere...

We received the invoice for payment today, needs to be paid in 5 days... So probably won't have any activity until they received our payment... How long do we have to wait? I am start loosing my patience...

[Progress.029] Slab Done!

When I was there early 7:30am this morning, our busy construction site was already crowded with trucks and trades person. Looks like we have different concret pump team this time.

There were 5 of them working, they started from the right hand side bay window corner at the front. Probably because there were some drop edge beams there and the ground level was much lower.

This guy holding a machine that looks like the edge trimmer we used for mowing glass. He keep inserting it into the concrete, run the machine for a few seconds, which I think generates some vibration for the concrete to be properly distributed between the waffle pod and steel mesh.

Around 8:15am we went to neighbour's backyard to have a better view of the whole site.

And again, we have this laser machine standing at the far corner behind where the kitchen will be located.

We are quite happy to see they included and put in steel mesh for areas where the hot water, air conditioning and water tank(not shown here). We have seen a few builders who simply insert a thin concrete block.

Every few minuts, they will use this stick with an orange thing (receiver?) to check the hight and it makes a quick beeping sound.

It was quite quick, they done almost 25% in about an hour.

When I returned about 10:30am, it looks almost done...

Urh... except the garage...

When I was there after lunch, they already started, they are working really hard today!

Later around 2pm, the concrete pump truck was gone, and they start removing all the timbers.

Our bay window looks like a chocolate cake, in concrete...

They are already walking on the slab, using a small machine which I think is to make it level.

There were some left overs and now I can see the other side of waffle pod, it's filled with lots of crosses, which makes it quite strong I think.

A closer look of the little machine, it has 4 blades at the bottom and it looks like a huge upside down fan.

This is a close look of the receiver.

This is the edge trimmer thing I mentioned.

When I returned late in the afternoon, it's all done!

We were told that it might take up to 4 weeks for the concrete slabs to be fully "cured", but it's already quite strong and can safely walk on it. Our supervisor told us last week he already ordered the frames and they should be here in a few weeks, so all we can do now is wait... For the concrete slab to dry/cure and our builder to send us the first bill...

Need to go to bed early tonight, tomorrow is my big day - city2surf....

[Others.011] Smef Water Storage Innovation

A lot of new houses always have to worry about the extra spaces above ground water tank would occupied, if you put it underground it would cost a lot more.

While searching for information about Waffle Pod on Google, I found this company called Smef - Water Storage Innovation. They sell a water tank that is designed to be in the same dimension as a normal Waffle Pod. With this Smef thing, you can just install it like the waffle pod in your slab! How clever is that! No more expensive extra digging for underground tank, and no more huge ugly chemical factory tank (like our ne....), have a look at the photos below from their web site.




Not sure how much it cost though... Unfortunately looks like it's only available in VIC, and it's a bit too late for us. If you are in VIC, might want to give them a call!

[Progress.028] Slab almost ready, waiting for concrete tomorrow

This morning, we finally have 3 trades person working on site, the waffle pods are been nicely stacked up like LEGO.

From a higher angle, you can see the waffle pods are been evenly laid all over the place, with the black plastic layer at the bottom. This guy is using a saw to cut out some irregular shapes.

I can now see the signs on one of those bags been left at the front yesterday, it says "One Steel Reinforcing" "com2540", don't know what is it...

Thanks to powerful Google, have a quick search and found this PDF file, even the prices are included! So this is call "Bar Chair".

From the same PDF file, I also found the name of the black plastic thing, it's called "Polythene Building Film".

And of course, how can I forget the most important "Waffle Pod", there's even a diagram showing you how it should be placed.

And I think that grey coloured thing is the "4 way spacer", placed around the waffle pods so that they can be nicely laid one by one with equal distance in between. This photo shows the waffle pods for the garage are actually thinner and you can see the steel beams been placed on the spacers.

This guy is actually walking on top of the waffle pods, so I guess may be it is quite strong...

2 other photos taken this morning.


I also found this page from Smorgon Steel Reinforcing which has a step-by-step guide for the construction of the waffle pod system(they call it "Waffle Raft Slab System"), you can have a look if you are interested.

When I checked again around 8:30pm, all the slab setup are done. We were told that tomorrow the concrete pump guys will be here to pump the concrete and our slab will be finished!

Just checked the weather forecast, Tuesday is going to be a raining day, so our slab will have a mixed of dry/wet days in the coming week for it to dry slowly and nicely...

[Progress.027] Materials for slab delivered

When I checked my site last night during my daily run, I saw some steel mesh been delivered. I thought they are going to start some slab work today. When I checked again this morning around 7:45am before going to work, there were lots of waffle foams been delivered, these guys are early. But there's no one there, how disappointing...

I checked again tonight around 8:30pm, and again just the big pile of waffle foams and other materials for the slab, no progress at all. Another beautiful day gone with no progress...

I took a few photos this morning as shown below. The first one shows 2 big rolls of plastic thing which I think will be laid at the bottom of the slab.

Second photo shows 2 big piles of waffle foams... To be honest, I am still not 100% sure if this thing is indeed strong enough to be placed inside the concrete slabs. Yes, I know that there are steel mesh and concrete surrounding it, but every time I think of standing on those soft foam thing, it's just an undescribable feeling...

This is a closer look of the steel mesh.

Finally a few other stuffs which I think is for holding the steel mesh around the foams or something. Will be clearer when they are been assembled.