Tusindfryd 7 – First visit

Even though it was raining heavily that Wednesday, work is not going to wait. Our specimen, house we are going to follow during its construction process, is located in a new neighbourhood south of Horsens. The neighbourhood is so new that it is not even shown on google maps yet (proof – the area east from the church). At first I wanted to write about how much I despise catalogue houses, sure they do look neat, but so does the one of your neighbour. But then I realised that this is not really about the house itself, it is about the process and it is about real life experience.

Our teacher was kind and translated the drawings, so we have a complete set of drawings and we can compare the drawings with reality. I studied the drawings last evening and the house is quite simple. It reminded me of our first-semester project. The house looks like an archetype of a danish house, outer leaf made of bricks, low sloped roof…well the whole neighbourhood looks like that. One of the impressive things is that the house is actually going to be built in less than three months. Even though the house is small and simple, they are totally not wasting time!

This is how the house should look like once it will be finished.

And here you can see the plan. I would love to point out what I do not like about this layout, but since somebody actually spent some time (more or less) on these drawings, I will keep my mouth shut. Again, the process matters.

This is the drawing of foundations – for those of you who can read drawings – since this is a catalogue house, the bottom part of the foundations should be made according to geotechnical report and therefore is not shown here. What you can see on the other hand is the size of the insulated block above the foundations – it is huge – I put more information at the end of the post. Another thing is that there will be a concrete slab resting on these blocks and then it goes all danish. Bricks, bricks, bricks ( I am not complaining, bricks are awesome -and I am preparing post about bricks as well !).

And I also have a lot to show about the process. Below you can see how the workers are pouring the concrete. Two guys in the yellow jackets do the heavy work, the left one is putting rebars in place with a shovel and the right one is helping with pouring the concrete. But I think that the guy in the orange jacket has pretty interesting jo. I know that it seems like he is just casually standing there, but look closer. In his hands…he is holding a joystick and he has a control over the machine. It is like playing video games all day.

Closeup on the rebars used. It is interesting to see how are the drawings translated. When you draw them, they are exact, linear and precise. On the drawings, everything is nice and neat, but once you get to the site, things start to get messy and foundations just take the shape of the form in which they are poured into.

Remember this baddas from last post?  If you are a concrete contractor – I would like to drive this one day, please.

And on top of this concrete, these mammoth blocks are to be placed, one of these weights 80 kg, might seems like a lot, but when you see the dimensions (1000 x 450 x 400 mm), you might be surprised. But since these are made of light clinker concrete, they are in fact very light for their size.

And I will end post with a useful tip.

Pro tip nr. 8 – Bring workshoes, cleaning ladies at school will be grateful.

Cheers

Ondrej