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  1. 160 Raroa Road, Kelburn, Wellington, NZ: our patch of dirt and flora.
  2. send in the arborist!
  3. build them pilotis (piloti foundation pads with rock-anchors) (piloti re-usable prefabbed plywood shuttering, concrete pumped from the street below)
  4. pilotis complete, height of supports shimmed using plywood bearing pads (or whatever the engineer recommends)
  5. chopper lift: we hoist in the entire building support cradle – used to ensure that we start from a very accurate base
  6. support cradle in position. Concrete is cast into the pair of entry support beams
  7. chopper lifts: each floor-deck component is hoisted in, preferably as shown. It all depends on the weight of each component – plywood weighs in at 550kg/m3 to 700kg/m3, and I roughly (conservatively I hope) estimate each T-beam component as weighing in at around 250kg – bringing each deck grouping in at around 1500kg – too heavy for the smaller choppers, but well within the 2000kg limit of the Iroquois
  8. main deck established, stair-link hoisted in. With a bit of luck we’ll be able to pre-plumb and wire most of the components…
  9. chopper lifts: lateral wall components. Depending on weight, I’m hoping to bring them in glass-and-all. Maybe we’ll put the clerestorey glazing in later: they look like a disaster waiting to happen
  10. lateral walls in place. View-side walls are different to slope-side service walls
  11. chopper lifts: entry wintergarden drop-in, northern wintergarden drop-in
  12. ready for the roof component. All roof support componentry in place. The portals around the entrance slot are concrete for thermal mass. Much of the plywood formwork is permanent shuttering – we’ll strike whatever components we want, exposing concrete where we want it
  13. chopper lift: the roof component is hoisted in (almost an identical duplicate of the floor deck, but lighter, and with bitumen waterproofing and some solar gear already added)
  14. assembly done. The madHouse is (all but) ready.

My guess is that the main beams of the support/set-out cradle will need to handle all the expansion/contraction side as well. (plywood expands like crazy when damp).

I’ve also been busy working out an information hierarchy for the project (it’ll act as a master reference for all drawings / components etc). More on that later.