43, The bays progress.

To ensure a neat finish for the lining and mouldings to be fitted to the sloped underside of the first floor balcony, I dressed a raked margin on the top of the face of the uppermost blocks. Having this done, I can now get on with it and work on finishing the ground floor stonework.
With these blocks ready to to be installed my next problem needed to be resolved, how could I lift them into position?. The heaviest of these was in excess of 100kg, they needed to be lifted about 1600 to 1700mm above the scaffolding and there was insufficient headroom to mount a winch.


The solution came in the form of a heavily modified trolley. A pair of vertically lifting forks slide on a frame fashioned from 25mm square tube welded to the trolley uprights, this is lifted by a cable slung over a pulley and winched onto a boat winch (eBay again, $15!), secured on the back. A day and a half well spent (I think anyway!) and it works great.
The blocks are wheeled into position and raised to the required height, I then insert steel tubing through the forks and extending across the wall, along these the blocks can be slid. These tubes have lugs welded on the trolley end to prevent them pulling through. For added safety I also tie the top of the trolley back to the scaffolding. Once on the wall the blocks can be manoeuvred into position using short lengths of pipe.

42, Another Distraction.

Just what I needed while I am trying to build a house!. My wife woke me early on the first day of October to tell me that water was seeping up from under the drive, Great!. Another three days wasted digging up and replacing the poly pipes. It was found that the roots from the "Sydney blue" gum tree, closest to the trench had crushed the low pressure B grade pipe I had used. Hopefully, replacing these with A grade "blue stripe" pipes should alleviate the problem. I had laid the two pipes, one for tank water and the other for dam water about a meter deep in a trench dug for power cables leading to an outlet in the front yard.
Also seen in the picture is our growing stack of welsh roofing slate, to the left beyond the shed, and some other procured slate pieces for fire place hearths (on the left of the shed) and coping's (on the right).