The blocks arrived today, but it did not get off to a great start…
The delivery driver refused to take the blocks around the back to the worksite, because he would have to drive across some grass and it had rained the night before. He also said that he would not put them in the bottom of the pool, even if he could have parked up close to the pool. Whilst they were being dropped off, I did some quick mental arithmetic and calculated that 9 pallets of 70 blocks, each weighing 21kg would be just over 13 tonnes… All of which would need to be moved around the back and into the pool by hand!
Thankfully, my very nice neighbour was on hand to help and we shifted two pallets in about and hour, enough for me to be getting on with anyway.
I have always expected the first course to be the most difficult to lay, as you have to make sure that they are perfectly level (hopefully the self compacting concrete helps here) and also some of the rebar is bound to catch the blocks perpendicular connections.
The first few blocks were quite frustrating, as almost every block ‘hit’ one of the vertical rebars that tie the slab and walls together. I got around this by cutting a V-Shape out of the bottom of the block and bent the rebar to make it fit.
However, I soon got into the flow of it and using the 1/3 and 2/3 blocks helped to move the blocks sufficiently to avoid the vertical slab ties (rebar). I only had to cut three of the rebars off at the base because they were completely in the wrong place.
Once I get to the third or fourth course, it should be pretty quick to lay, as I will not have to accommodate the fixed vertical rebar anymore. The vertical rebar for those courses will be added at the end by placing them down in the cells.
It took quite a while to lay the first course, but probably easier than I expected, and with the light fading fast I had to call it a day. It was quite late, when I finished, so left a few blocks to be cut until tomorrow as the diamond cutter is quite loud.
