New Creation - House Warming

[Deleted]

I'll bring beer to the housewarming. Wife and kid would love to see Romania!

[connrock]

I'm still shaking my head at how strong and well built your home is!
I'm with Steve on the sand shoveling,,,NOT for me!
The night guard and mice catchers are well suited for their jobs! LOL Why weren't they invited to that Birthday Party a while back? LOL
When will all the wires and pipes be installed?With all the brick and concrete,,,I don't see where they will go?
I noticed that the trees and bushes are still green there.Your climate must be much warmer then here in Connecticut because all of our plants and trees have long ago lost their leaves for winter.

Thanks again for sharing the building of your New Creation Adrian!
I look forward to seeing next weks progress and I am SURE you are too!

connrock

[NatureNut]

Adrian, this must be the biggest lapidary and wire wrapping project you've ever done, huh? (with good help, of course) My imagination is going wild thinking of what it might look like when finished. Thank you for your weekly updates.
Jo

[Deleted]

It does not matter how many posts you make I am totally amazed every time by the quality of the construction. We have bank vaults here that are not built much stronger. Thanks again for the great photos and lessons in really good construction.
Jim

[adrian65]

Thank you friends!

Steve, we also have that system here - a simple concrete pump with hose and sepparate concrete trucks - but there is also the combined system you see in the firs pic. Anyway, if more than 9 cubic meters are needed, another truck has to come by, as you see.

Scott, keep the beer cold for the next summer, when the house will hopefully be completely ready. Beer is good in warm season.

Tom, we here firstly build the homes "to the red" stage (name comes from brick color) and only after that we complete it with finishes like plumbing, ellectric wiring, tiling, windows etc. Anyway, the first things to do after finishing the "red" stage are the plumbing, to be hidden in the walls and floors.

Jo, you're right, the biggest project so far To help your imagination, go on the 1st page of this post and scroll down to see a 3d sketch of how we imagined the home will look like. So far, I think the real thing is pretty close to the designed one.

Jim, thank you. My pleasure.

Thank you also for all your replies questions and advices.

Adrian

[Woodyrock]

Really good to see houses being built to last. The way they are built here, an "old" house is anyone over five years old. When our daughter was an exchange student in Germany, she was given directions the first time she went out alone. In those directions was a turn 'at the new house'. Our daughter was in the Black Forest, which was largely unaffected by war time bombing. The """new""" house was built around 1800. Our daughter got lost, and had to call for help. Much to her host parents amusement.
Woody

[Deleted]

Nov 10, 2012 10:15:22 GMT -5 adrian65 said:

Scott, keep the beer cold for the next summer, when the house will hopefully be completely ready. Beer is good in warm season.

You have a deal. I promise not to bring American beer.

[adrian65]

Nov 12, 2012 14:00:09 GMT -5 @shotgunner said:

You have a deal. I promise not to bring American beer.

Scott, in our trip there I enjoyed pretty much the Blue Moon beer. A Bud light was also good and refreshing after a demanding hot day.
So, American beer would work as well as any other one

[beefjello]

You sure are making great progress Adrian, it's really coming along!

[adrian65]

Hello again friends!

It's been another good - well, in fact I'd say very good - working week here.

At the beginning of the week, more brick came on site for the completion of the walls.


With the material at hand, the masonry work continued not only on daylight, which is getting less and less day by day...


... but also after sunset, a few hours, when the weather was good:




After completing the brick walls, the team begun the work at the columns' casts.






In the next photo you can see a cast and, in the background, the neighbour's house which was also raised, helping me in taking the photos. Notice a different construction system: they raise the concrete skeleton firstly and only after this they start the masonry work, building the walls. This way, the walls are not part of the structure but only dead weight (drawback); the advantage of the system is the freedom for rearrangements of walls in the future.


So, this morning the casts were complete, with all the wire binds and braces needed:






And this Friday afternoon, the concrete truck came on for the concrete pouring of the columns:




Here's a picture taken only a few hours ago, when the concrete pouring was completed:


Some extra concrete was still available after filling all the columns, so we used it to fill the lower parts of the windows' hollows at the ground floor level. This will provide a better support for fixing the windows on the lower edge.


And, finnaly, a funny picture, with a dog from another neighbouring property with a house under construction. Look what happens when dogs live so long in the company of construction workers


Next week, the columns' casts will be removed and the work will focus on the upper slab (the upper floor ceiling).

Thank you for looking,

Adrian

[connrock]

Hi Adrian,,
You sure have come a long way from when you and Ioana started laying out the house with that first hob!
I still can't figure out how all the wiring,heat and plumbing will be installed and hidden but I guess I just have to wait for another episode of the new hit reality show "House Building Romanian Style",staring Adrian,Ina,Ioana,the construction crew,,,,and of course the new star of the show,,,,Painter the dog!

Last week I showed your home construction and the photos to my son Tom and he is as amazed as a lot of us are about how well built your home is!The first thing he said was,,,"They must have a lot of earthquakes there"!

I hope the weather is good for you as you head onward and upward with your new home!

Thanks for this post!

connrock

[Donnie's Rocky Treasures]

Absolutely amazing how your house is coming along!

[sheltie]

When are you expecting to move in (sorry if this questions has been asked earlier)?

Following your pictorial story sure brings back some great memories of my years in Europe.

[adrian65]

You are so right Tom, that first hob... almost impossible to me to believe that was only a bit over two months ago!
You are so funny with your remark about the reality show, HAHA!
No we don't have lots of Equakes, but strong ones.

Thank you Donnie!

Shelie, I said before I think, we plan to move next summer. As Garry stated on the first page on this thread, detail works are time consuming.

Adrian

[Deleted]

Great photos again and the progress is amazing.

Something else has occurred to me. It looks like the same crew is doing everything from carpentry to brick laying to concrete finishing. Am I correct? That does not occur here very often. Here there are carpenters that come on the job to work with the wood, brick layers for the brick and concrete crews to do the concrete. The plumbing is put into the walls and floors so the plumbers are working with the other crews so everything fits together. It is the same with electricians. Very few people here have all the skills necessary to build a house.

The plumbing and electrical has to be installed by licensed workers then inspected by the city or county officials.

EVERYTHING about building your house is much different than here.

Thanks again for taking the time to show us the work.
Jim

[adrian65]

Jim, we have here the system you mention, but only big construction companies use it.
You noticed correctly, I have a team of workers which do all the works to finish the house "to the red" stage. Only after this, the plumbers and the electricians would come and install the wiring, pipes etc on the walls and on the floors. After this another team would come for the finishing works (walls, floors, ceilings).
It's often that the last mentionned team is the same as the first team, who builds the house "to the red". This way, they already know the house and also they cannot complain about imperfections (thinks like a wall is not straight etc), 'cause it's their work isn't it? You made it wrong "to the red", now fix it "to the finish"

Adrian

[sandsman1]

wow Adrian lookin good man - your gonna have a nice place pretty soon loved all the pictures keep-um commin

[RocknCritter]

This is really cool and darn amazing to see how Adrian has documented the construction process. I'm currently extensively remodeling my house (built in 1978) and I can watch the construction of a new house across the street from me. It's pretty amazing what kind of shortcuts they took during the '70's here.

I've also watched several construction projects in Brazil. They use a lot of bricks, mortar and metal rebar also but not nearly as much as what's going into Adrian's house. While they don't have much seismic activity in Brazil, the construction looks similar except that Adrian's construction looks like it's on steroids!! This is a house being built to last.

I also appreciate that it's not a stupid McMansion. I wouldn't be surprised in a few decades a lot of the big, oversized houses in this country are abandoned like the castles of Europe. The construction is usually shoddy, they're expensive to maintain and the supply outstrips the projected demand in most markets.

[adrian65]

Nov 23, 2012 10:07:48 GMT -5 RocknCritter said:

...Adrian's construction looks like it's on steroids!!

LOL, how FUNNY! ;D ;D ;D

Let me show you the steroids added this week

Firstly, the casts from the ceiling poured two weeks ago were removed.


Here you can see a plywood board falling down:


After removing the casts from the upper floor columns, the crew focused on the cast of the upper floor ceiling.
Firstly, the casts for the beams...


... and then the casts for the slabs in between:


Here are a couple of pictures showing the path from the ground floor to the upper floor...


... and then from the upper floor to upper ceiling:


The works on the ceiling continued. You can see here the beginning of forming the re-bars for the beams:


Once formed, the re-bars of the beams were lowered in their position:


Today, they continued the work to the cast of the outer contour of the beams:


This is were the works are now. Next week I hope the concrete is going to be poured.

Thank you for looking,

Adrian

[adrian65]

PS. Rockncritter, during our trip in USA back in 2009, we were amazed about how nice and discrete architecture you have in Colorado. The houses seem to blend in the scenery, local materials are used. Beautiful. You probably must have very strict architectural (urbanistic) rules.

Adrian