going horizontal

The erection crew from Litecrete has started installing the horizontal members, including both beams and wind girts. The beams are pretty big – some are over 30 feet long. So far, they’ve fit into place pretty precisely, and they appear to be pretty plumb, level and square. This means that the coordination between two engineers (the foundation and the steel structure) and three subcontractors (the foundation, the steel fabricator and the steel erector) is working. So far.

They have installed a lot of steel since they started putting up the columns on Monday.



Almost all of the steel will be left exposed on the interior. We probably won't keep the blue crayon marks (eg "bottom"), but it'll be cool to have all the bolts and beams visible inside. Most likely, we'll keep the steel finished in the gray oxide paint it has now, with some touching up after the shell is complete.

There are a few problems with the fabrication of the steel members. So far, one column and three beams were fabricated wrong, and need to be fixed. The fabricator rebuilt the column overnight, while the three beams might get fixed with some field welding and cutting, since they’ve already been installed and it would be a hassle to take them out.

With the steel in place, we can finally see the conflict with the sapodilla tree that we're trying to preserve next to the patio. I think I misjudged the tree's exact location. Oops.