Scaffold and Wall-ties

As promised, here are a couple of scaffold pictures :

The first shows the scaffold at the back - nice new shiny poles and brand new planks. Apparently scaffold planks are in short supply at the moment, and have gone up in price from £5 each to £7 each. Still sounds like cheap timber to me. The second shows the ramp built to give easy access from the top of the site. The plan is that this ramp will be altered, as the building progresses upward, from a down-slope to an up-slope. In theory the second steel beam is going to travel up there, before being lifted into place.

My final picure of the day shows a rather blurry new-fangled wall-tie :

These are stainless steel twist-drill style rods with a sharpened point at one end. These are simply hammered into the relatively soft thermalite blocks and the twist generates a drilling action that carries them into the block. The other end is then incorporated into the mortar joint of the outer wall and all is thus locked together. This is how they get around a problem that I mentioned a few days ago - the fact that the inner and outer wall joints do not line up because of the "thin jointing" method of building with the thermalites.

Not much happened today. They have asked the Building Inspector to make a visit and until he shows up they don't want to go any higher. My understanding is that the Buildings Inspector is invited to come, and if he chooses not to, or can't make it, then too bad - he can't have any complaints later. I think I'd rather he came and gave his seal of approval though.