Review of EU Seed Legislation
Sorry for not posting recently. More to come soon.
For those of you who filled in or are interested in the online questionnaire concerning the review of EU seed legislation I posted about here, you can read everyone’s answers here.
I think it makes quite interesting reading, and it shows how your voice can really be heard if you take the time to participate in something like this.
Foundation Cement
We had no fewer than three cement mixers in front of our house today. Strangely enough, two were full of cement, and the other had the pump attached to it they used to pump the cement into our house. Why they couldn’t just fill the truck with the pump full of cement too, and save the trouble of bringing an extra vehicle, I’m not sure.
The other thing I find curious is why, all over the world apparently, cement trucks always have to have silly slogans on them. Translated, this one says something along the lines of ‘Concretely into cement’. When I lived in the area around San Francisco some of the cement trucks used to say things like ‘Get a load of this!’ or ‘Find a need and fill it!’. Is it just that working with cement means you have to have the sense of humor that goes along with it?
The tool above they used to pull large amounts of cement around the room, in order to get it level. It was powered and vibrated, and could move a lot in one go.
Here it was coming in.
This tool had a flexible pipe on the end, was also powered and vibrated. They used it to insert into places the concrete might not have flowed on it’s own, like the inkassing or the odd corner, in order to encourage the concrete to flow.
Finally, when they finished with everything else, they smoothed out the floor. The picture above was taken from the same place the distance shots in this post were made.
House Foundation: The Braid
This is what the contractor calls ‘The Braid’. It’s concrete reinforcement steel or rebar as it’s often called, at least in the US. It took five men nearly two days to complete the structure, and the picture above is after the first day. You can see the special pieces here designed to fit into the inkassing. You can also see the piles have been filled with concrete and also have steel reinforcements coming out of the tops.
Below is a picture of the same part of the wall, but from more of a distance. This picture was also taken the second day after they finished. You can see it’s been built up in layers and in many places, especially connecting the rows of piles, you can see extra reinforcing material was added to give strength in specific places. This was all very carefully and mathematically planned by the construction engineer.
This last picture is almost the same as the previous, but you can see the extra lines of reinforcement a little better.
Tomorrow the concrete will be poured, and what’s called the construction floor will be made. After this happens our house will have it’s new foundation and will finally be stabilized! In total the construction floor will be about a foot or 30cm thick, and on top of that we’ll put a layer of insulation, floor heating and finally a finished tile floor.
Until now we’ve been enjoying walking around in the space with it’s high ceilings, and it’ll be a shame to lose the extra height to the thick floor. We will actually gain about a foot (30cm) of height compared with what was there before, but to put the new floor in deeper than that would have been too expensive, because it would have meant working under the water table.
The other thing that’s critical about this stage of the project is that once the concrete is poured into the inkassing it can never be undone, so tomorrow when they pour the concrete it will be an irreversible step.
Uncovered History
These are two pieces of ceramics I came across in the last month. It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve ever come across old ceramics here in the ground, so twice in one month is all that much more unusual.
On the top is by far the most special find. This was found by the contractor working on my house foundation, and it’s a 300+ year old piece of Makkumer tile, made by the oldest still operating business in the country, Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum. It’s also still a family business, passed on from one generation to the next. This will be the last generation however, because the current generation of children have other interests.
The piece of ceramic below, I don’t know much about other than it appears to be part of a lid to something, because underneath is a lip to hold it in place. I doubt it’s more than 100 years old, but I don’t know. I found it while digging in my community garden. The previous gardener had built a foundation for a greenhouse by driving fence posts deep into the ground, and in the course of removing them I had to dig a very deep hole. I found this piece of ceramic about one meter deep.
It’s really quite a vivid blue color for being so old, and it makes me wonder a bit what kind of very toxic chemicals may be in the glaze. Anyone have any idea? Cobolt maybe? We were just discussing this kind of thing here.
Inkassing
This is a Dutch word to describe what they are now doing on the foundation work. If I look up the word in an online dictionary, it says ‘recess’, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Anyone have a better translation?
Anyway, in the picture above, you can see they have made some holes in bottom of the wall, 50cm every 50cm to be exact. They will make these holes all the way around the house, and in each one put a jack like you see above. In this way, half the house will be supported by means of a jack.
In foundation repairs jacks are always used. This is because you somehow have to move the weight of the house from the old foundation to the new one, and jacks are always needed in some way. I think the way they will do it with my house is a little unusual however.
What will happen is they will pour a new concrete floor and entomb the jacks, as well as fill the spaces in the walls. The concrete floor will have a complex reinforcing structure, and will be supported by the piles that were driven earlier. The new foundation will then be in place, and capable of supporting the house.
Over time, the old foundation will continue to degrade and sink, and in this way the weight will gradually be taken up by the new foundation. The construction engineer mentioned he included in his calculations that the old foundation will continue to provide a degree of support for the house into the future.
