This week in construction has been interesting. We’ve had some issues with reinforcement, the brick machine and brick layout. Some of the reinforcement was never purchased so I’m trying to re-working an alternative and succeeding!!! The brick machine is having some technical issues. Before we started using the machine, it was sitting in the shed of a school in the bush for years. So it hasn’t been used until we started, we did do general maintenance but one of the main pins that controls the arm that presses the lid to make the brick is wearing away and not compressing the brick as much as it should be causing a 2mm difference in the brick. This might sound like a very small margin BUT if the brick isn’t even everywhere then the bricks don’t lock like they are suppose to and we get a lopsided building. Think of a 2.5m high wall, each brick is 180mm high divide 2.5m by 180mm is almost 14 bricks multiply that by 2mm is 28mm, which is a lopsided building. So we’re trying to sort that out and get the machine back to perfection. The brick manual suggests a way to lay bricks for a single wall. The foundation is a double wall and that layout doesn’t work as it creates 2 single walls, which wobble badly, so we tested 2 different ways to interlock 2 walls and TA DA we succeeded. This is the part I enjoy, finding new, creative, and different ways to do things. The way we decided on is MUCH better and is working well. So this brick system is a learning curve for all of us. The technology is old but none of us has any experience with it. The guess and test and experimentation has caused the project to slow down while we figure it out and try all these different ways, we seem to be on a rhythm and it’s slower than we had planned but we are now “cooking with gas” as they say.