Building the walls

I'm aware it's been  while since our last post, but we have been flat out building the walls. Sounds easy, yes? well, not quite.

first off - our 'flat out' is flat out at weekends and after work in the evenings, with tht time reducing every night as we go into autumn.

We are building our walls using something called 'Insulated Concrete Formwork', and in particular, a product called Polarwall. Our walls will be pure concrete, but to build a concrete wall, you need to have something to make the shape. If you look at bridges made of concrete - for the supports, they were not actually built like that. What they would have done is built a strong frame the shape of the support out of timber or metal (something called 'shuttering'. The frame would be very strong, and into that frme, they would pour concrete. Once the concrete is set, take away the frame and bingo - you have a concrete bridge support. You can use the sme framework for the next support and so on.

With ICF, we build the 'frame' using polystyrene blocks - except they stay in place when the concrete is poured and are actually the insulation for the house. It's n incredibly simple, but clever concept. Most ICf companies offer blocks that literally look like Lego - the problem with that is that virtually none of our dimensions were standard - the tanks are all slightly different sizes, the external walls and internall walls are differen thicknesses, plus a whol host o other factors that meant a standard ICf solution would not have workd for us. With Polarwall, we can make any size or shape wall we want.

Rather than rabbit on, I'll sumarize the tasks.

• Build frames for the windows and doors.
• Cut panels to fit down the sides and tops of the openings to make sure when the concrete is poured, there are no 'thermal bridges' - basically bits without insulation that let cold in. 
• BUild up the walls
• Build scaffolding
• Cut and place rebar for all the lintels
• Pour the concrete into the wall

This has taken us many weeks, but we are finally nearly complete. The two outstanding tasks are the last two on the list.