Thursday 12 January 2012

Redesigning the foundations

Wednesday 11 January 2012

I phoned Constantine to find out what had resulted from his meeting with the structural engineer, and he said that the amount of concrete needed was a lot less than we'd thought - only 25cm wide and 50cm deep.  And it only needs to be under the wood, the stone stem-wall for the cob can sit on one arm of the upside-down 'T' of the footing.  The wood frame will be inside - hurrah!  Smaller (less cost) and inside (less maintenance).  We will also have the advantage of visible wood, probably proud of the plastered cob wall by about 5cm, which could be very useful for fixing shelves and cupboards.

These are my sketches of how the foundations might work, Constantine hasn't confirmed anything yet.  Side view (outside to the left, inside to the right):


And potential view from inside (before plastering, which would cover the stone stem wall).  The biggest difficulty, I think, will be fitting the stem wall into the spaces in the frame, otherwise the cob will be hanging unsupported, or the frame will be up to 10cm proud.



No comments:

Post a Comment