crack injection

recently I have been working on a commercial tilt slab building doing crack injection to fix damage from the Feb 2011 quakes here in Christchurch.
This process involves locating the cracks, grinding off the paint to expose them, any cracks that are over 0.2mm in width then have 30mm deep holes drilled at 120mm centres  to allow injection, a sealant spread over the the total length of the crack then plastic injection nipples are glued on.
Once the glue has set a epoxy resin is injected into the crack through the nipples.
once the resin has set the nipples are removed and the sealant is ground off and the crack plastered over to allow for repainting.
this is a very time consuming process that can be quite tedious but I quite enjoyed it.

the building with cracks exposed

blown out panel that will need replacing

grinding and measuring crack lengths

crack with injection holes drilled

cracks with sealant and nipples glued on

same again using a different sealant

holes with nipples removed showing resin, sealant has been scrapped off

House renovation

One of the jobs that i have recently been involved with is a house reno, this involved removing a fireplace and existing wall, opening the floor and installing an extra load bearing pile.
then the wall was reinstalled with a door where the fire place was, the walls were brought up to current bracing standards then relined them with bracing GiB.
we also removed a window and replaced it with a new aluminum unit.

the brick fire place

Me taking it apart

the wall behind the fireplace to be removed

opening up the floor

wall lining removed and floor open

fireplace exposed

new pile in

new steel beam in to replace wall

Lath and plaster walls

fitting new bracing GiB

new wall with new door 

GiB on

removing plaster around window

window removed

window rough opening to be reframed

new window in.

recladding an external wall

For the last week I have mainly been removing the bricks from the outside of the house that I am working on but today I got to re clad the outside of of room.
This involved removing the building paper, measuring for the new Eco-ply cladding, fitting a new trimming stud to allow for the fixing of the two sheets, fitting extra bracing using Handi-brackets, I put in 4 of these.
I then cut the two sheets of ply fitted them and nailed them off to the bracing pattern of 150mm centers, tomorrow I will tape seal the joints and re install flashing's around the window.

removing the building paper

measuring up for the ply

fixing in the extra trimmer stud

drilling the holes for the coach bolts

Handi-brackets in place

nailing off the ply

and it's done

me with my work

replaceing temp cladding with bracing ply

 This week we started to remove the block work from the north side of the house down to the height of the first floor so we can check and update the bracing.
The bricks on the upper story have a cavity but the lower story blocks have been filled to form a solid foundation for the concrete floor.
On Friday myself and a work mate took down the temp cladding that was put up after the feb2011 quake and replaced it with Eco ply bracing.
We started at the top of the North Gable wall down to the height of the top windows, next week we will finish removing the bricks, paper and existing bracing ply lower down and do the same there.

north end of the house with temp cladding at the top where the bricks fell off in the Feb 2011 Qauke

Typical quake damage

Ali taking down the bricks

Me taking down some bricks

Brick cavity with paper behind, note this cavity no longer meets the current standard of 50mm so will need to be modified when the bricks are put back.

solid filled lower story blocks

Ali removing the temp cladding

With the temp ply removed we can see that the stell lintel above the windows that was only mortared into the bricks is now just sitting there not supporting anything

cutting and fitting new blocking and dwangs for the eco ply to fix to

Me nailing in blocking to allow fixing for the eco ply

and some more

the finished result.

Dismantling the Ensuite

One of the jobs I had this week was to de construct the Ensuite, we had to remove the fixtures, remove the the wall tiles and ceiling Coving and then the GiB and Villaboard, remove all the screws, nails and GiB glue.
Then I had to rip up the floor tiles.

Me chipping tiles

Wall tiles removed, now the mirror and GiB

Mirror removed

Where the toilet was

Starting on the Shower

Sam working on the shower

Starting on the floor

Shower walls stripped

And it's done