Hey Y’All
I need to come up to speed on slip form technology. I know they exist but never seen or used them.
Nothin’ on the Concrete Network page, Copernic turns up nothing.
I need to come up progressively from ground level to about 10′ AFF in lifts of roughly 8″ to 1′ on a 24″ thick wall, and these forms need to be strong.
Any ideas? Web sites? Books? Jobs I could go see?
Happy Holidays!
DRC
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Replies
I get one of those free trade rags called "Permanent Buildings and Foundation" that has items of interest from time to time. They deal mostly with ICF's but I seem to recall some of their advertizers have offered slip form equipment.
The magazines website is http://www.permanentbuildings.com
Good luck
Jules Quaver for President 2004
I have two old books on my shelves. "Build Your Own Stone House" by Karl and Sue Schwenke, Garden Way Publishing 1975 and "How To Build A Low Cost House Of Stone" by Lewis and Sharon Watson, Stonehouse Publications 1978. Somewhere around here I've got some papers by the Peace Corps or somebody showing how they were building round water cisterns in Africa out of stone with a curved slipform. Always thought it would be fun to build a little round stone building that way. I think Helen and Scott Nearing's old book, "Living The Good Life", covered it too.
JonC
Have you tried Google? I got 1100 hits on this search.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22slip+form%22+concrete+wall
Dave, if you can find a silo builder/company in your area, they are a good source for slip form methods and techniques. Find the good one as there is a tendancy for slip form accidents when they go forward too fast.
__________________________________________
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
Sounds like "Jump Form" might be what he needs. That is where the concrete is placed & after setting, the same forms are moved up to allow the next placement. You'll have a cold joint between each placement.
Silos - large ones only - are built by the slip-form method. Concrete is placed continuously & forms are raised in small amounts on a regular basis. Here it is a continuous 24/7 process & would be very pricey by housing standards. But you have no cold joints since placing never stops.
DfD
who incidentally works in a sturctural engineering office that specializes in silo design...
dave.. what is the total ht. of your wall.. it really doesn't sound that you need slip-forms , just highway grade forms... a 24" wall is still not that big a deal..
any heavy const. outfit can do this
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Aren't slip forms the stuff you fill out for the insurance co. after someone falls on your job?
T
Do not try this at home!
I am a trained professional!
Just slip the form up<G>
Did a 28 ft tall reinforced concrete chimmeny with"slip" form, simply moved the 40" by 36" form up 3 feet each day; and poured (carried in buckets to the top by hand) the new concrete into the form. Still good today, no cracks last year in 6.8 earthquake.
As is often the case, I agree with Mike. If you are only building a 10' high wall, you do not need slip forms. Slips are really best suited for unusually shaped forms that are needed for really tall pours. (30' and higher is typical) I'll do Mike one better and tell you that you don't need special forms for a 24" thick wall. Standard Symons forms which you can rent for really reasonable prices will work just fine. We have poured lots of walls 5' and 6' thick using standard Symons ties without any outrageous bracing. We pour 24" thick walls in 12' to 15' lifts and then pull the panels and go another 12' to 15', so 10' is no problem. When slip forms are used to pour 30' heights (actually, for any height) the pour must be continuous until completion. The raising process is really slow and without a pump truck, form filling can be brutal. Do you have some strange conditions here that we don't know about ?
carpenter in transition
Edited 12/22/2002 9:12:17 PM ET by TIM_KLINE
We use Symons Steel Ply for foundations. 6" & 8" ties are what we normally deal with. They have several different forming systems available though. http://www.symons.com
"Do you have some strange conditions here that we
don't know about ? "
Well, there are those who have suspected that about me for years, but as Mike has observed in the past, I'm really a button-down kinda guy. <G>
Actually Tim, you're right. These forms aren't for concrete at all.
Here in the Southwest, adobe is a big deal. Or at least it was years ago when all one had was dirt and time. Heck, you could build a house with that.
Now the only ones who can afford adobe are those who still do it themselves (like me) or those wealthy enough to pay for a lot of labor. That trend has pretty much come and gone, though.
Now the truly wealthy want 2' thick rammed earth walls. And I'd love to be the guy building it for them.
As a builder, I simply have no interest whatsoever in the Mother Earth News Back To The Land Call All Your Friends For An Earth-Ramming Potluck Weekend approach.
Trust me, it doesn't work.
However, I do have a Volvo EC-35 compact excavator. This thing will mix up 20 tons of crusher fines and put it anywhere you want in about no time flat.
She also has auxilliary hydraulics that will run a plate compactor on a quick disconect. The compactor has a small enough footprint to be just right for this. So I have about 11' of reach through 360 degrees on rubber tracks. I can put the dirt or the compactor anywhere I want, including on top of a wall, and down inside relatively shallow forms.
I've already got the mix worked out. This stuff turns into something that resembles sedimentary rock. All the benefits and none of the drawbacks of adobe construction.
So I'm thinking if I poured a footing and a curb (short ICF stemwall), I might be able to mix, place, and compact the earth up to 6" shy of bearing, pour a concrete bond beam, and presto, instant traditional rammed earth house.
I just need a strong, inexpensive, easily placed forming system that will enable me to work in 1' lifts. Maybe something that I can move as I go, 16' at a time. Work my way around the house in lifts.
OK, any ideas? This could be a real lot of fun.
Thanks, all.
DRC
"real lot of fun. "
An old Italian guy about 320 BC discovered that if you throw your described mix ito a fire first, and then add water afterwards, it is real good stuff <G>
Good one, Junkhound. <BG>
I think I need to borrow that line for the clients who won't buy the ICFs I try to sell them in the first place.
Nope, I never said that undoing a few thousand years of technical progress made any sense, just that I could sell it. Y'know, ya' get these rich people who are so alienated from any sense of authenticity in their lives that they feel like they can use their money to buy someone else's spiritual or cultural tradition . . . hey, wait a minute . . . was that out loud?
OK, snide comments aside, I do have a market for mud houses. A big one. Now I just gotta figure out how to turn this quaint old-fashioned organic environmentally friendly homebuilding technique into an industrial process. <G>
FWIW, I live in an adobe, too.
DRC
Do your rich clients also buy a steel roof over their adobe like Casa Grande'? ('nother grin), or do they need to have you build under a cliff overhang like Mesa Verde?
Hey Junk,
Yep, you guessed it. The ones with any sense have us putting Galvalume corrugated panels on anywhere fron 8/12 to 12/12 pitch.
The slaves to fashion still have us doing "flat" roofs. At least nowadays that means 1/4 in 12.
Beats goatskins, latillas, and 2 feet of dirt anyday.
OK, back to the forms;
I'm serious about geting this rammed earth technology worked out. There are remnants of villages in Ban-Po (China)that are 3,000 years old. I've been in houses made of this stuff that are over 300 years old.
The rich clients are research philanthropists. I'd like to get this technology to the point where regular folks can afford it too.
I'm thinking about commercially available steel forms with locally fabricated form locks. The idea here is to use as much equipment as possible to replace human labor, i.e. hydraulic plate compactor hooked onto the end of my excavator instead of laborers with little pneumatic tools or 2x4s withy handles like you see in the hippie books.
Any ideas?
Happy New Year, All!
DRC