The Slab

If you're anything like me, you hear the word "slab" and your brain immediately tacks on the words "of chocolate" and you start dreaming of Lindt, but we're not talking about edibles here!

We're talking about the very momentuous occasion that was the pouring of the slab for our second house!

We were welcomed to this next stage of our construction with confusion, when giant blocks of styrofoam were delivered to our block.

Who knew that the way they build slabs nowadays, they pour concrete in and around styrofoam! Don't answer that question, I'm sure there are many of you construction-savvy people out there who would love to tell me we're idiots for not knowing. So, this particular paragraph is for all us innocents who don't know, ok? It was at this stage that the words 'raft waffle slab' that kept getting bandied about when we were signing contracts with the builder started to come back to us. See when they did a soil test on the block, our soil was classified as H - highly reactive. Sounds really healthy, doesn't it?

Well the structural engineers certainly love H soil, because it meant that they had to design a very special type of slab that would cost double what a normal one would (which of course is an added extra - yay). Now excuse my very unsophisticated attempt at explanation here, but the way our slab works is that it's designed to be able to flex and move a bit as the earth expands and contracts depending on the weather, but that it will stay together as a whole, like a raft. The waffle part becomes obvious with the styrofoam involved. Imagine a waffle. Actually, I'll give you one to help you out:

Drooling yet? Right. So imagine all of the raised bits are concrete, and all of the empty square bits in the middle are styrofoam. This is the way our slab was to be built, to provide both strength (to support two storeys of brick veneer) and flexibility (to adapt to Queensland's strange weather patterns).

So the styrofoam blocks were all laid out, with the reinforcement laid over the top.

And then the concrete was pumped in.

Tom couldn't resist making his mark. Unfortunately he did this right where there was to be a wall separating our garage and our downstairs bathroom, so you can now only see the bottom of Allie's name sticking out from under the wall.

Allie standing proudly near the engraving.

The view from the stormwater drain hookup in the backyard (which is under that pile of rubble).

The slab from a similar position in the backyard. The concrete area closest is the alfresco area.

On the same morning that we took these photos of the slab (a Saturday, if I remember correctly), we arrived at the block to see this:

Problem 1: The gate of the construction fence was open
Problem 2: The door of the shed was open
Problem 3: We still had tools stored in the shed

So, with trepidation we went to assess the damage in the shed. Guess what was missing? The wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow that Tom fondly tells me was the same one that his father used to build his first house in Newcastle. All of the other tools remained, but the wheelbarrow was gone. Which interestingly enough, turned out to be the most inconvenient item the thieves could have stolen. Decent wheelbarrows are not cheap, and cheap ones are terrible quality!

Nevertheless, we moved on, and had no more trouble from thieves from that point onwards (that we know of).

The next stage in the process was where everything started picking up pace, and we could actually start visualising the house taking shape. See the frame going up here.