Building in your area of the world.

[DSW]

So we won't continue to derail the scrap bin thread, I though maybe we'd do a separate thread on the topic of building in various areas of the world.

Thanks for the detailed explanation guys, we build a bit differently here , commonly 600 x 300mm concrete 10/15mpa strip footings and then clay-brick walls up to a 75mm floor slab. Brick walls for the rest. If we were to do work like DSW's first picture we would just use bits of rebar. Typically we don't have basements  but if we do( like my home has a wine cellar) it's excavated pit in form . No ramp and vertical walls. Funny how things seem the same worldwide yet are done in totally different ways.

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I've certainly done my share of building mostly with residential and small commercial structures over the last 30 some years. Mostly it's been either light wood framing or poured concrete ( work that almost 15 years before an injury on a part time job made me stop). I though I'd toss out some picts of a few projects Iaininsa might find interesting and maybe others can add some of stuff in their neck of the woods.. I've done some block work on occasion as a friend I went to college with was a mason, but no real picts of the block work. There's very little I haven't done in a house from footings and walls, to framing, finish trim, plumbing, electrical, to paint, siding and and roofing

 

A few of a stick built shed I built for a family member. Poured slab and 2x construction. A quick generic farming shot, and a pict of it almost finished. ( I was working on running the electric to the shed this past weekend.)

 

 

 

 

 

A few picts of the poured walls we did for a large custom home, We also did the footings and helped set the steel. There was an unusually large amount of steel in this house, even for a custom home. Basement walls were block in this house and done by someone else. They needed the garage done faster than the mason was going, so we picked up the walls for the garage and poured them. The top of the forms is about where the garage floor will eventually end up ( I can't find my picts of the finished pour). Because the garage was sitting on a large pile of fill, the "footings" had to go down almost 12', hence the poured walls that will all get buried eventually. The small "room" in the back of the picture ended up being used as a maintenance room just off the walk out basement that shows in the back of the 2nd pict.

 

 

 

Only real picts of block walls I have on file I can find. My old boss decided to deal with the water issues he was having in his basement and lower the floor at the same time to give himself more head room ( he was 6'7" ). Then they dug out the crawl space under the 2nd part of the house and made it a full basement as well. I helped some with the dig out, but that was right about the time I'd been hurt and couldn't do much. Later I framed up for the relocated stair and framed in some of the walls. Wall on the left side of the last picture is of the wall that got poured to support the dirt shown in pict 2 where they are forming the footings and setting up the steel for the poured wall. Whole basement floor has radiant heat tube in it similar to Frostys shop. Floor shown in the last pict is stained concrete.

 

 

 

 

 

[ianinsa]

Thanks, yes that is interesting, amazing that a couple of 'sticks ' can do! Here wood gets to be pricey, as an architectural student I was involved with one of the early timber framed office buildings for our local lumber millers association. But it's cheaper to build 'proper' buildings here.

In the past (till about 2008) labor intensive methods were encouraged to provide work for 'the masses' so that's just how things were done . Now the regime does'nt  care so there has been a definite shift into mechanization and the use of readymix concrete is certainly gaining momentum.

I've always been a do it yourself (as opposed to DIY) kind of guy so when I need a lot of bricks for perimeter/doundary walls  I built a cement brick  vibratory press and pan mixers, then as I had the pan mixers I built vibratory tables to make paving. Needed corrugated iron roofing for the new shop well then build a rolling mill etc . Needed sand and stone for building then build jaw and hammer crushers, then of course you need a screening plant? Not always the most cost effective route in the short term but it's what I enjoy! 

My last 3 properties all with homes on exceeding 500sqm and all with swimming pools, all self built and I've never bought a truckload of sand or stone.

I've just started building two extra cottages on my Kyalami property and I'm thinking along the lines of SSB(stabilized soil brick) so I'm building a machine(surprise, surprise) I've always been bad at keeping photographic records but I'll make a better effort this time 

 

   

[ianinsa]

DSW, that floor finish looks amaising

[DSW]

That's what he did for a living at the time. Decorative concrete. The floor was a "test" so he could try out some new techniques and ideas. This shows the floor in the 2nd half of the basement. The 3rd portion that was to become a bathroom was to have an overlay done on the floor once the walls were up to look like tile and a bath mat, but he never got to that before his death.

 

 

 

A few of what we normally did. Poured concrete that looked like brick or stone. I don't have many on this computer for some reason. Seemless stone pattern we did at his house for his wife after he passed away. And a pool deck for one of our earlier customers. And a big front set of steps, landing and side walks for another customer. Steps are all one pour ( I wish I could find the picts of my custom form work for this job). I also custom made the urethane stamps for the stair texture to match the stone mats we were using and did custom edge stamps that encircle the main landing. The picts don't do the finish justice since it is early morning in the winter and the frost on the steps makes it look like the surface is cracked when it's not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ianinsa]

Back in the eighties when "the lost city" resort was built , they brought in some experts from the USA to teach locals how this was done, so we have some really good examples of this kind of work.

Our 'new experts' then went on to produce really horrendous ones too! I've always appreciated the skill(and feel) it takes to do that kind of work well. Just visit Vegas , you get to see some really awesome and some really awful jobs.