Steady Progress

By the time I got home today it was raining hard, so this photograph shows progress up until last Friday :

Whilst a couple of the builders have continued with the stone work, the other has been building up the inner wall for the next storey. The stone is now nearly at the level where the scaffold can go up, but none of the pointing is done yet, so there is still a little way to go.

The inner wall is constructed of the light-weight thermal blocks, and now we are truly above the damp course all the way round, they are using a new jointing method. It uses a thin joint of a special "Thermalite" mortar which is more like tile grout. Apparently it has a number of advantages :

1. Easy and quick to lay
2. Thinner mortar joints improve the thermal efficiency of the wall
3. Goes off very quickly, hence you can build as high as you like in one go

However, there are also some disadvantages :

1. Joints are too thin for a standard wall-tie, so they have to use special ties knocked into the blocks
2. Joints become out-of-step with the thicker jointed outer wall
3. Less scope for adjusting levels to compensate for variations in block thickness and shape

I haven't seen it done yet but apparently this last problem is solved by taking some form of planer to the top of the finished course, to bring all the levels down. Apparently in warm weather such as we have been having, you can do this within 30 minutes of laying the blocks - it is already strong enough.

You can see that the re-constituted stone lintel has been put in place above the nearer of the openings. In fact the second one was done today. We are a little concerned about the colour match with the stonework, especially as the same material is being used for all our window surrounds. There is a house down the road which apparently used the same material so when it is drier later in the week we are going to go and take a look. We would have loved to have these components made out of real stone, but it is very expensive.