It’s hard to believe a week has flown by since the magnificent concrete spreading team were in action and already the “framing team” have erected the structure that is the skeleton of the outside walls.
Unlike the framing at home the rear wing's is made of steel but I gather the terminology is very much the same so the “uprights” are called “studs” and once they are covered up they are probably just as hard to find as the wooden ones at home (anything I try and to attach to our walls at home is always surrounded by a plethora of holes as testament to my search to that elusive stud………and those stud finder devices never work for me, it’s the same with touch less faucets and touch less hand dryers, I can never get them to work, it’s as if I have stealth hands!! but I digress, back to the construction). As you may recall, the framing rests on the top layer of concrete blocks that, together with the concrete poured into the foundation trenches a few weeks ago, make up the buildings “footings,” (I’ve received a couple of suggestions to set this process to the Dry Bones music). I was wondering what anchored the steel frames to the concrete or maybe it just rests there and relies on gravity to hold it in place? Well the answer to my musing was delivered by the harsh “crack” of what sounded like a gun shot! Peeping cautiously from behind the shed, where I'd taken cover at what I thought to be the sound of gunfire, it was with no small relief to discover the gun shot was all part of the construction process. The framers attach a steel base plate to the top layer of concrete blocks and they do the attaching with a tool that, with one “shot,” drives a metal bolt through the steel and into the concrete to make a very snug fit. I’m adding getting a crack* with that tool to my bucket list along with “driving the heavy roller!” Although wall framing “does not a building make” it definitely moves us from the abstract to the definitive, now you can see the dimensions of the building and once the internal walls are “framed out” the internal design will spring into life and then it will be on to installing the internal dry wall, the external cladding and the roofing. I couldn’t end without mentioning some major audio/visual (a/v) improvements taking place in our Historical Church. This week the a/v contractor is installing the new system in the Historic Church, a system that is completely compatible with the system that will be installed in the Great Hall. Once the construction is complete it will be possible to stream services and events from the Historic Church to an audience in the Great Hall and, via the system in the Great Hall, upload to the “cloud” for wider distribution into parishioners' homes. As an interim measure, a temporary link between the new a/v system in the Historic Church and our existing system will be established so quality content can be more easily produced and more easily disseminated to the ODEC family. Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. * getting a crack: "having a go" English colloquial
1 Comment
Mal Higgins
7/29/2020 06:19:50 am
David, I was looking at those studs yesterday, and like you I could not figure out how the metal plate at the bottom of the studs was attached to the concrete. That must be a heck of a powerful bolt driver!
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AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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