Thursday 9 July 2015

Breaking Ground

A quick summary of the events that took place on day one on site

Our first day on-site was a busy and eventful one, the aim was to clear the site and start to experiment with our Gabion foundations.

First, we sorted through the different piles of wood that were on the site, making sure to categorise the timbers on how useful they will be and storing them separately for later use in construction. Once that was done, we split into two groups, two of us stayed on site and worked on clearing the more stubborn weeds and roots away whilst the other two went to pickup some of the reclaimed bricks we were planning on using to fill the Gabions, and also to pickup some lunch whilst we were out.

All hands on deck as we clear away some
 of the old wooden fences from the site

Upon our return, and after a quick meeting where we all caught up over a quick lunch, we went back and started working on levelling the site by spreading some of the earth that had built up in one particular area. This, along with most of day one, gave us the opportunity to test out the different types of media that we were going to be using to document the build process. The first lesson we had learnt from working with the equipment was to make sure that it is all charged and ready to be used, which our video cameras weren't. However, I managed to capture a quick time lapse of the site clearing process on my iPod to get an idea of how the time lapses could look.


Once we had cleared most of the weeds and levelled the site, we tested out the bricks and Gabions idea. This was promising given that the bricks and timber fit quite snugly into the Gabion, accommodating roughly 48 bricks per Gabion.

Jack working the bricks into the spaces.
All those years of Tetris finally paid off. 

After reviewing the designs and the measurements we noticed that we had actually got the scale wrong for the site. So it was back to the drawing board. We spent some time discussing the possible solutions to the scale problem, we agreed on moving the design further up into the site but also sectioning it into three distinct areas which are joined together by the structure, providing the versatility required of the structure whilst making efficient use of the space we have. Once we had gotten a rough idea of the shape of the structure, we plotted out where the Gabions would sit.

"What is this?"


So what's next?

Having worked out a new plan, the plan for Day Two is as follows:

1) Dig out the holes for the Gabions to sit in, starting with the furthest corner of the site as that could be the one that is the most problematic. 

2) Fill the Gabions with bricks and place them into the foundations, making sure that they are ready for the posts and the scaffolding works. 

3) Set out and mark the Bale wall's form.

4) Update materials list and plan out the schedule for the big week, next week. 

Day Two looks like it'll be a big one, lots to do! 

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