Shop Talk

Hi Everyone! Just a quick update on construction for this post:

The crew has been working hard on the shop and its really starting to take shape!

Once the walls were built up to the underside of truss height, we poured a ring beam into the blocks to tie it all together and provide bearing strength for the roof. The trusses were all fabricated on site by Bruno, our welder. It was great fun driving over the bumpy Ndola roads with 12m long steel on the truck!

Once they were complete Levi, Lucas, and I spray painted them while they were on the ground which worked quite well. I was planning to hire a crane to lift the trusses, but the crew decided that they would rather save the money and lift them by hand. We did lift one up, and it wasn’t too bad, but I had a little brainwave so we welded up a crane attachment for the skidsteer with some scrap steel we had kicking around. That worked very well! We had all the trusses up in one day.

While Bruno finished welding the purlins on, the rest of the crew continued the block walls up to the underside of the roof metal. Once all of the walls were up to that height we installed the roofing, we also added a few clear polycarbonate panels to allow some natural light in.

The crew is now bagging the walls (in Canada we call it sacking) which is basically taking cement paste with a sponge and smearing it onto the rough block to fill in the holes. Once that is fairly dry they scrub it with an onion bag to smooth it out. The interior walls are complete and they expect to have the exterior walls completed tomorrow.

We are also currently installing the man doors, garage doors, and priming and painting the interior walls. Once the paint is complete, we’ll get the windows in and start the electrical.

Thank you again for your prayers and support!

AJ