Day 6 - In Form

 


We're back, and we're formin' like Norman, whoever that is.



These are the ICFs, the insulated concrete forms. And that's a radio. And that's some wood. And so on.


What we do is we line the footings with the forms. The forms, as you will see if you scroll a bit, are made of two pieces of foam connected lengthwise by plastic gates. The space between the two pieces is where we will pour the concrete. Forms sit on top of each other like big Legos and lock into place.


As we learned with the footings, concrete is strong and will apply pressure to its container (remember Kool-Aid Man?) as it is poured. The black plastic pieces are the gates that I was talking about. Those metal clippy gate things that connect the two gates in the picture together are used to keep one piece of the ICFs to the next so that there are no gaps for the concrete to leak from.


These metal straps, the same straps that we used for the footings, run under the forms and are screwed into the gates through the foam so that Kool-Aid Man doesn't bust out the bottom of the forms, too.


Not too shabby! You're looking at the garage and the makings of a basement. We will stack a few more rows tomorrow and get this sucker plumb, level, and square so that we can pour on Thursday.

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