Sunday 29 June 2014

Step 7 - Creating the Columns


Continuing the theme of trying to demystify the building process (and at the significant risk of making it sound too easy and losing my job to a team from grade 3!) the next step in the process now we have created the foundations are the columns. These very important often unappreciated part of the building will support the floors above.....This building is challenging as it has a number of spaces such as the exam hall, the small theatre and the drama studios that require column fee space (imagine watching a show with a column in the middle of the stage!) To reduce some of the complexity we elected to move these functions to the top most floor as they the structure above them is comparatively light..

Lets go back to the foundations... you might remember seeing the squares containing more steel, these marked the column positions, you can see the columns are laid out in very regular grid.



 This extra steel that you can see is added reinforcement to prevent 'punching shear'  A simple description of this would be the column punching through the structure...  Mr Hulk to the right is imparting some punching shear on this unfortunate wall. Even Mr Hulk would have problem punching through our column positions with our extra steel in place. An added bonus of the current design of the building I feel....

So now we have attached the steel work into the foundation and ensuring that they can take the pressure of the building above we can start making the actual columns...








As if to prove that its all common sense, we actually make a huge metal mould which is clipped around the steel reinforcing bars and then
Step 1 
Step 2 - Add more steel


Step 3 - Add the mould




Step 4 - Pour in the concrete
Step 5 - All Finished - Repeat 72 times per floor!


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