BUILDING A SOLAR HOUSE IN FRANCE - WEEK 7 - ground floor walls started (monomur)

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First course of monomur on thick levelling bed of mortar. Decided to have a 5cm overhang all round. Originally intended to have timber framed walls, but prices received were ridiculously high, so chose monomur, with timber framing and cladding only on the South West (mostly window anyway) and gables.

Monday 18th June - phone call from Francis to say that he'd be on site again as promised. Arrived to find palettes of monomur blocks already on slab, thanks to crane. This week covers a period of 5 days.

Jun 18, 2007 - 12:29 PM

Laser level - rotates a horizontal laser beam, and where a level is to be checked the builder places a staff with a sliding receiver that bleeps when it senses the laser.

State of play on Tuesday morning - levelling of the first course of monomur takes a long time. Some vertical reinforcing bars cast into the concrete slab were a few centimeters out and had to be bent. Slight adjustments of window positions to avoid too much cutting of monomur blocks.

Monomur blocks where vertical raidisseurs (stiffening) is required on each side of south west window.

Progress by Wednesday morning. Rain on and off all week.

First dimensioning error. Francis, in my absence, decided to move a window by 5 cm (2 inches) to avoid having to cut a monomur. Working from the inside, he didn't see that it should have lined up with the window below. I made a fuss, but decided in the interests of good industrial relations, to not demand that he take down 2 courses and rebuild it. Margaret could not see the error - only an architect would probably notice it.

Album last updated on Jul 29, 2007 - 12:43 PM