Another round of shotcrete forms

Posted on October 15, 2016 by Simon

Contents

The Video
Extra bits
Steel Studs
Screwing into Steel Studs
Plumb and Braced
Welding Rebar
The Gallery

There was just enough decent weather left in the season to prep and shotcrete the walls around the perimeter of the central circle. We had to start with the formwork, and since these walls had simple curvature (rather than compound curvature), we decided to use OSB board screwed to vertical steel studs. Of course, rebar was added in and tied. I’ll get into details and lessons learned later in this post… And there is always a gallery of pictures at the end, but first, the timelapse video.

The Video

Extra bits

Steel Studs

These MarinoWare steel studs I have been experimenting with are a bit of a mixed success. They are great for holding the formwork, rebar, electrical, etc. And I like to think that they provide some reinforcement for the concrete. On the negative side, the shotcrete crew were not always able to properly encase them and possible voids in the walls along these studs probably reduced the wall strength and provided a path for water to channel. I wouldn’t call them a total failure, but I have decided not to use them in this same way for the central tower. Instead, I will brace that formwork from the outside. I will continue to use these studs for the South wall because the design there has these outside the concrete, supporting the rigid insulation formwork.

Screwing into Steel Studs

Pre-drilling would just take too long and it would probably drive you crazy trying to keep the boards aligned to get the screws thru the pre-drilled holes. Self-tapping drill point screws are what you need. They should be long enough to get thru the form materials (3/8th inch OSB in my case) and still bite in nicely to the steel. In places where you put an extra layer of OSB (such as to thicken the joints), you will need an extra 3/8ths of length. Also, to save money, you want to use the shortest and smallest screws that will work. Finally, the key thing is the head… I recommend the Hex-Washer-Head because it will be held securely by your driver without any slippage or cam outs. Do not buy Phillips head screws, you will seriously regret it.

Personally, I ended up mostly using TEKs #10 x 1 in. Zinc Plated Hex-Washer-Head Self Tapping Drill Point Screws that cost about 4 cents each. If you can get them in bulk, you can probably reduce the price to half that.

Plumb and Braced

For some reason, the camera kept moving on to the next area before we would complete the important job of plumbing and bracing each section of wall. However, that step was important and worth a small section here. The walls had some natural stability because of the curvature, but we still needed to brace them against the force and vibration of the shotcrete and they were not always naturally plumb. On dirt, we could just brace with a 2×2 or 2×4, screwed to a block on the wall and then screwed to a stake. However, for most of this job, we had to brace on the concrete deck and didn’t want to attach the bracing to the deck and risk damaging our radiant tubing… The solution was to place a board on the deck, screw the diagonal brace to that, and also screw a horizontal brace and tie it back into the wall. This worked pretty well.

In one location, the wall was out of plumb and took some serious pulling to try and force it plumb. Some combination of the boards, studs, and rebar was fighting against us. I ended up just using a strap and a come-along to pull it. Part of that strap is still embedded in the concrete wall, but at least it is plumb.

Welding Rebar

I get a lot of negative comments from people saying that it is “against code” to weld rebar. In reality, the building code has about 85 pages devoted to welding rebar. The code talks about what types of Rebar you can weld (mine has a little “w” on it to indicate that it is weldable), diameters (most welding rules don’t kick in until #7), what types of welds you can do (butt joints are not acceptable), pre-heating, exceptions based on engineering approval, etc. I was going to get into it a bit here, but it is probably better to just suggest you read up on it yourself.

While I agree that the heat treatment that comes from welding does influence the ductility and other material properties of the steel, in certain situations (some of my situations), it does make things much better. I know what I am doing, everything is inspected, no need to worry about it.

The Gallery

Here is where we put some of the pics we took during this period…

from time to time, I’ll just take a photo of my screen so I can have the measurements handy in my phone… Some times it is faster than trying to transfer a proper screen shot…

The Hex Head screws are much much better

For us, this build is pretty focused work. But while we are out there, the kids will often find time to play or read a book in some odd place.

Working on the side wall in the guest room. We had this one shot from the kitchen across the basement stairs.

Me setting up the camera in the kitchen…

I think I may have kept too many pics of David setting up the camera…

Sherri gets goofy some times…

Joe working on the dining room wall.

David Setting up the camera. He likes this job.

Here my father is working on the wood forms and my mother is tying rebar… Probably not the retirement they expected.

Sliding the rebar into the short wall section.

For this little side wall, we put in all the rebar pieces and then cut them down to size.

David setting up the camera for a shot

David was climbing around on the tower steel and took this interesting pic of Hunter walking thru the site.

Another shot of the playroom apse before it got started. You can see all the steel arches leaning against the rigid insulation in the background.

I separate out these jobs, but they often overlap. On this day, I was working (For ANSYS inc) from the site because the stucco guys were working on the garage. In the evening, I probably switched to welding the playroom apse or something like that.

I originally set everything up around this middle post, then I welded the outer edges in place.

To form the apse, I had to weld the thicker rolled steel arches to the thinner galvanized steel studs… It doesn’t have to hold forever, just long enough to be encased in concrete. It took a little practice to be able to weld the different materials reliably. I did little patches like this ever few inches along each edge where they met.

This looks like it was from my timelapse, but the rest of the video was lost… It happens sometimes.

This is one of those pics that happens when your 10 year old is just walking around with a camera.

Welding the rebar

apse steel ready

Apse steel from above

Outside of the guest-room wall. We shot the walls from the outside to try and avoid messing up the deck.

The inside of the guest room forms.

We try to avoid it, but occationally we are all working within a very narrow distance of eachother…

For some reason, Hunter likes to pose for the timelapse… Just while he is walking by in the middle of the shoot. The easter egg photos are mine now.

Friends playing while their parents helped out…

The north side, ready to shotcrete.

This gap between the back of the kitchen wall and the Quonset hut will be filled with a lot of earth.

This pic is trying to show that I cut away the fox blocks and drilled the horizontal rebar into that wall to tie everything together structurally.

The connection between the guest room wall and the mudroom…

Rebar and Shotcrete over the Quonset Hut

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Simon

Contents

The Video:
Information:
Gallery:

Part of my earth sheltered home design included burying a Quonset hut. Actually, this was the easiest and cheapest part of our build and if we had done the whole house this way, we might have been done the first year.

This post is for phase 3 of building our earth sheltered Quonset hut. In phase one, we put up the steel Quonset (with a little help from our friends). Phase 2 was getting up the Fox Blocks ICF endwalls. That part was interesting, but took more time (and several posts). We chose ICFs for the endwalls because they made the transition from wall to parapet for retaining the earth very straight forward. Wood end walls would probably have been cheaper and faster, but not nearly as durable..

I have seen Quonset huts buried directly (with just a pond liner for waterproofing), but I wanted to put in a layer of reinforced concrete first. Phase 3 is to cover the quonset in reinforced concrete before we can bury it in phase 4. (actually, I guess there was a waterproofing step before we can bury it also). In this way, it is really the reinforced concrete that supports the earth load. The Quonset hub becomes fancy form-work and an interior finish.

Here is the video about phase 3.

The Video:

Information:

Hot: The day we put the insulation and plastic on the roof was officially the hottest day on record for our area… The reflective Quonset hut was making it feel twice as hot and the heated metal was melting the duct tape that we used to tape down the Styrofoam. I edited the water breaks out of the timelapse, but they were about every 15 minutes. Fortunately, we got clouds and cooler weather for the second half.

Crew: Just a quick note that I appreciated all the help I got on this portion of the build, both amateur and professional.

Rating: My Quonset is rated for 75 lbs per square ft. I am sure the engineers were thinking snow load and not concrete, and there is probably a significant safety factor built into that. Either way, I am sure I significantly exceeded the official rating by about 50 lbs/sqft. Fortunately, my shotcrete was also sitting on the footings, shotcrete above that was really sitting on the shotcrete below, etc. The stiffening shotcrete really formed an arch from footing to footing and is probably not loading the Quonset hut significantly. Maybe if all the concrete were wet (no internal stiffness) at the same time, we might have had a problem, but instead, the shotcrete was curing and carrying load as it was applied. Spreading the shoot over the 3 days probably helped.

Crenelations: The Quonset crenelations (groves) were about 7.5 inches deep. Across the top sections, we decided to fill with polystyrene strips 4 inches thick, 10 inches wide and 24 ft long. Some quick math, and I can tell you that we placed more than 7 cubic ft of Styrofoam in each groove, which means we reduced the load on the top of the roof by about 1000 lbs per groove. There were 20 grooves, and I filled 16 with Styrofoam, so that is a 16000 lb reduction. I left 4 of the crenelations without Styrofoam (and added extra rebar) so they would have stronger hoop beams across. We filled the concrete to a depth at least 4 inches above the crenelations, so the concrete in the crenelations was nearly 12 inches thick.

Plastic: The plastic liner was primarily to keep concrete from directly contacting the Quonset, and secondarily to provide an extra waterproofing layer. I wasn’t fanatical about it. The plastic is tough, but not impervious to puncture. I have heard of people using pond liners with a heavy felt underlayment, or even grinding down all the bolt ends that could puncture the plastic. Pond liner and underlayment can easily cost more than 50 cents per square ft (and the Quonset surface is well over 2000 sqft). Our 6 mil plastic sheet cost less than 1/10^th of that, so when it got a few little holes and tears I didn’t worry about it too much. I had thought that the plastic would make it more difficult to walk around on top of the Quonset (because it could slip), but actually, it improved the walking conditions quite a lot. I sagged the plastic to allow it to properly fall into each crenelation when the rebar and concrete were added.

Openings: The Quonset hut is a nice strong shape to work with (mine was an “S-Type”, the “Q” type would have been even better, but less practical without the straight stem walls). Loads are transferred around it like pressure on an egg. As you know, any crack in an egg weakens the overall structure tremendously. I planned to have 3 openings in my Quonset shell, two skylights and a side door (to the mudroom). The most stressful time for the Quonset would be when it was covered with 46 yards of wet concrete (186,300 lbs) and two tons of rebar. You do not want to have holes in the Quonset at that time. Instead, I just created bucks to keep the concrete out of these three areas. Later, I can come back and cut the Quonset steel with a grinder to make the openings.

Rebar: Each crenelation got 4 pieces of #4 rebar. One vertical piece was “inside” each crenelation, centered and about 4 inches from the inner surface. The other verticals were at a layer about an inch past the outer surface of the Quonset hut, spaced 8 inches apart. The horizontal rebar was mostly tied to the outside of the vertical rebar and spaced no more than 12 inches apart. Some horizontal pieces were placed first, against the surface. These first horizontal pieces made it easier to place the outer layer of vertical rebar without things falling inside the crenelations. They were kept off the Quonset hut by placing a few 1.25 inch rebar chairs (according to code). We wanted most of the horizontal rebar further out where it could help hold more shotcrete up.

The other important rebar code section to worry about is overlapping the pieces. We had a 40 ft long Quonset hut with 20ft long pieces of rebar. I just placed them end to end and then came back later and tied 4ft long segments along that seam. That was more than enough to overlap both sides by 40 diameters (code).

Electrical and Plumbing: I didn’t include it in the video, but we also ran plumbing and electrical before adding the shotcrete. These were then inspected. Part part of this was running white vent tubes up the side of the Quonset so they would come up the skylight curbs.

Balance: The Quonset hut shape holds even pressure very well. It will actually get stronger when I put the balanced earth load on top… But while applying dynamic load (such as the shotcrete) it is important to apply it evenly to both sides so the Quonset hut isn’t pushed flat. Our shotcrete was poured over 3 days. The first day got most of the short vertical walls done (our Quonset hut is an “S type”). This stabilized the base and got us ready for the second day where they added most of the shotcrete, including filling some crenulations all the way across. In the video, you can see them working one side and then the other, back and forth. This required moving the heavy hose, which is tiring. They made their lives a little bit easier by toeing the hose with the lift whenever they could. Then the crew left for the weekend (not ideal) and came back on Monday to finalize the top, add the shotcrete for the skylight curbs and do a final coat for smoothing. All this time was partially because they also shot the bedroom at the same time (upcoming post), but planning to shoot things in a balanced and paced way is a good idea even if you could shoot faster.

The Compressor: The shotcrete is moved to the wall in two ways. The mix truck dumps the concrete into a hopper where it gets pumped (by a very expensive concrete pump) thru the hose to the nozzle. In the nozzle, the “nozzle man” injects compressed air to blast the concrete at the wall. Part of the magic of shotcrete (the strength, lack of cold joints, etc.) comes from the way it impacts/compacts the wall particle-by-particle. Unfortunately, the compressor broke down soon after starting on the Quonset hut and somewhat spoiled the day (but somehow didn’t reduce the cost). Ironically, this same compressor had broken down when they did the basement shotcrete, which was the last time the crew had come out. They already had a concrete truck on site with 8 yards of concrete in it, so we decided to pump it out. I knew that this wasn’t quite ideal in terms of speed of application or strength, but it did work and I didn’t have to worry about cold joints, since it was the first bit to be applied. The next day, they rented a nice new compressor for only 60$ / day and it ran flawlessly.

Hard work: Pretty much everything about shooting shotcrete is hard work. Moving the hose, aiming it all day, keeping everything flowing, finishing the surface, repairing any issues with the equipment, cleaning up, loading up, moving scaffolding, etc. It is all hard work and I appreciate the effort of the crew. Certainly I would suggest anyone think twice before deciding to take on this part of the build themselves.

Gallery:

These are pictures taken from my cellphone or time-lapse screenshots… Enjoy.

Here you can see that we didn’t need to add rebar chairs very often to keep the rebar off the quonset

I used smurf tube (ENT conduit) to run my electrical.

Aerial view of the Quonset, ready for shotcrete

The lift was fun. Figured we would get some rides out of it.

Aerial view of the Rebar, ready for shotcrete

Shotcrete is hard work.

Here is closeup. You can see the rebar chair keeping the horizontal bar off the quonset.

Here you can see how the shotcrete pushed the plastic (peek behind the door frame)

This is pumpcrete around the plumbing vent stack that came out of the bathroom in the quonset hut. This is the mudroom, so it will also be enclosed later. Otherwise, I would have covered this pipe in concrete to protect it.

Here is the rebar on the other side of the door. These hoops were full depth all the way across, so I put an extra piece of inner vertical rebar.

Pumpcrete near the door. Note, I didn’t cut the doorway out of the quonset until the shotcrete had set.

Here Michael is playing with wasted concrete as they clean up the pumpcrete on the wall

Note, I didn’t cut the doorway out of the quonset until the shotcrete had set.

For my design, Rebar is spaced 8 inches horizontally and 12 inches vertically.

Getting going on the Shotcrete

The lift was indispensable

Ideally, they would have two lifts so half the crew could shoot while the other half finished.

Working on the roof

This is the end of the 2nd day (the first real day) on the quonset.

Aerial view at the end of the day. Some bands of concrete were completed across the whole arch and set before they came back to fill in the rest.

Rebar and lath for the bedrooms

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Simon

Contents

The Video
Details
Statistics
Rebar Chairs
Welding
Curving Rebar
Gallery

Last year, we got started on the steel structure. This year (2016), we got all the rebar and lath up in preparation for shotcrete. First, the video… Then some info, but mostly a larger picture gallery than usual.

The Video

Details

Statistics

This process took from 2016-05-05 to 2016-07-26, so nearly 12 weeks of the calendar. Of course we also worked on other things during that time (such as the garage which will be a separate video). Specific to this bedroom wing, we worked (at least for a couple hours) on 26 different days. The time-lapse camera (which I ran pretty faithfully) recorded 77,653 images. At one every 5 seconds, that means it was running for 388k seconds, or 107 hours. If we divided that into 8 hour days, it comes to about 13.5 days. About half the time, I was there by myself, 1/4 of the time with Sherri, and the last quarter Sherri and I had other help (Hunter, John, Bonnie, Joe & Jessica (my parents), Dan, Ethan and the plumbers).

If I had turned all 77,653 images into video at 29.97 frames per second, it would have been a little over 43 minutes of video. I edited that down to under 10 minutes (less than 1/4). In some cases, I edited out scenes, in others (such as that last interior wall), I just ran the speed of the video up to x900. You are welcome ;^)

Rebar Chairs

We added rebar chairs to stiffen up the assembly and prevent “bounce”.

It is important to leave some space between the rebar and the lath for the concrete to completely encase the rebar. To achieve this, we made sure to tie the lath on loosely (leave room for a couple fingers). this works pretty well for the roof because the weight of the concrete will push the lath down and away from the rebar, but no further than the wire ties. However, in the walls, the concrete can “bounce” the lath and then fall off the wall. After seeing my setup, the shotcrete guy asked me to stiffen up the walls by adding rebar chairs where the lath was bouncy… I had these chairs left over from the quad deck floor and they worked perfectly.

Welding

Welding was great because it really stiffens up the assembly so you can climb it without fear… and it actually doesn’t take much longer than tying. In many cases, I just tied enough to keep the bars in place and pull any wide intersections close enough to weld. Then I would just weld the rest of the connections much faster than I could have tied them.

The downside to welding is that the heat can actually change the properties of the steel and make it more brittle if you try to bend against the weld… However, in my case, the welds are really just there to keep the steel in place long enough to pour the concrete. After that, it is really the concrete that keeps the steel together (and vice versa). My welds are intentionally shallow, just enough to tack the pieces together without significantly weakening the rebar.

You may find some places have building codes against welding rebar, but if you read them more carefully, they are really talking about cleaning that surface crud off the steel. You get that sort of thing with arc welding, but not with the MIG welder that I use. But in any case, there are no such rules for residential construction where I am building.

Curving Rebar

When you curve rebar, it is always trickier to curve the first and last couple feet. But the middle curves pretty easily. So, I usually curve the full 20 ft long pieces and then cut the nice continuous curve into as many pieces as I can get. If the piece has a 5 ft straight wall before the curve, then I just start curving the rebar 5 ft from the end. I usually start by “over curving” the steel a little bit and then straighten it out to get the final radius that I want.

Gallery

Here is a gallery of pics. Some are just as people started or moved the go pro time lapse camera. Others are just candid pics that went by too fast in the timelapse. There are also occasional cell phone pics in there also. Thanks to everyone who came out to help.

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Photo op after getting the windows in.

A view of the top of the apse after adding the rebar.

Hard to see because it is backlit, but humming birds and butterflies kept getting stuck inside the lath.

The top of one of the interior walls

After getting the first rooms studs in place.

How the bedroom wall studs were attached to the tube steel. The angle cut across the stud was so my drill could reach those screws.

This is the connection for the end of the hall. In this case, the studs were under the tube steel, so the connection was a little different.

A close up view so you can see the stud with the rebar passing thru it and the lath and fabric attached.

Michael reading in his room.

While out there, Dan did some heavier welding also. Here you can see he is pretty happy with the weld.

Here David is setting up the Camera after changing the battery.

Climbing up to get the camera…

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Some times we would turn on the camera and then move it. It would get these odd pics along the way.

It took us a while to figure out the first skylight frame, so we were pretty proud of it when we were done.

Hunter checking out the camera… Did I mention that it is a wide angle lens… Not good to get this close ;^)

Putting on the last board and we decided to pose for the timelapse.

After adding the first set of OSB boards. The neighbors must have really been wondering.

After adding the screws from the inside of the skylight, hunter would drop out the bottom… But this time, I took away the ladder.

Here I am holding the boards up on the outside while hunter is inside putting in the screws. This was so I could strip the boards out after the concrete sets.

Michael up in one of the skylights.

Kids just doing their thing.

This shows two skylight towers. On the one, I aligned the fan box with the angle of the tower, and the other I leveled with the ground. Not sure which will look better.