Structure-start of masonry work

Week of February 22, 2016

A Forest of castillos... Oscar is telling me that when they build the brick walls, they only build 3' in height at the time and fill in the adjacent castillo with concrete for support. They also build at the same time a portion of the intersecting wall for rigidity. The interesting thing is that they don't pour the concrete slab on grade till after the interior plaster is done, to insure a smooth, clean surface for the stone floor.
One can "read" the layout really well now. Jim had trouble at first, but now he can see how it will lay out.

Forest of castillos

The Terrace columns, holding up the second floor where Jim's Studio is will be footed with reinforced concrete not stone wall. See below the R-bar bottom grid to which they will attach the vertical reinforcing.

Large compacted gravel on the bottom, the Mother of all footings...

February 25-28, 2016

Blocks are used to "form" the footing of the columns

The outside columns supporting the second floor get BIG concrete foundation and much heftier steel.

Foundation of Big columns up to the level of the stone foundation walls.

After the installation of the ARMEX (reinforcing steel) for the Castillos (columns) and Dalas (the horizontal steel), they are thoroughly tight together in preparation for the pouring of the concrete.

At any "splice" the Armex is overlapped and the same at all corners.

And now comes the good stuff... the concrete. We got REALLY lucky, we got an unexpected rainy day just as we were pouring the concrete and that is going to give us a REALLY strong concrete.

Starts to look as "seeds coming out of the ground". Nice...

Monday, February 29, 2016- Bonus Day!- leap year....

Today they are installing on the perimeter foundation beams a Fiberglass membrane into a bed of asphalt type water proofing. I don't have a detail photo, but you can see below and in the Brick section the black band over the concrete dala. That is the water proofing. 

The brick delivery started today. Oscar has all the material sent to the job site on time. Way to go my boy!!!!!!!

I am adding this at a later date, as I had an error in my previous paragraph. The water proofing (the black stuff) goes on ALL of the foundation walls, not on the Perimeter only. I also have some detail photos.

This is supposed to prevent any Hygroscopic water migration from the soil into the brick walls