site visit

This was my third site visit to a building under construction. It was in an industrial estate in Pakenham (other side of the city were i live) It was a really goood visit because they were in the process of putting up one of the trusses as i got there which was good to watch. However most of the building didnt exactly relate to my major assignment which was ashame but still good to see how they do it.

This is the truss being lifted into place by the crane.

This is a picture of the two workers on the cheery picker trying to direct the truss into place.

This is them trying to place the first end of the truss into the connection and bolt it in place.

This is the guy doing up the bolt so it stays in place. This was really good to see. He is using his right arm to hold a peice of metal which he is using to leaver it into place and make it tight while his using his left arm to do up the bolt while it is in place.

This is the truss in place and connected at one end. The crane is still taking the weight though.

This was good to see the truss didnt fit properly at one end. If you blow the picture up you can see that the truss coming the other way is getting in the way of it joining up to the column so they just got out the oxy tourch and cut away the bits that were in the way. I thought that they were made perfectly to size to engeneer specifications but dad (who is a build/architect) say that this happens all the time and although everything might work on paper is doesnt always work when it comes to putting them together.

After the guy had cut away the bottom so it could connect to the column he then had to make some new holes for the bolts to go through.

This is just a pic of the concrete panels and the connections built into them where the crane would attatch.
This just shows the roofing system and how it attatches to / is held up by the concrete panels.

Thsi shows a rafter with cleats and the purlins attatched to the cleats.

This is just a picture of c section girts and purlins lying on the ground waiting to be lifted into place.

Site Visit

This was my third site visit to a completed building and by far the most helpful so far. The building was my local mitre 10 which has just recently turned into a mega mitre 10. It was really helpful because the construction method was identical to that which i am researching for my major projected. That is tilt-up concrete panels attatched to portal framing. This is the first building i have found which is constructed like this.

This shows the front facard of the building which is made up of concrete panels.

In this picture you can see the concrete panels of the front wall abit better and also the metal sheet walling which used to be part of the old mitre 10.

This shows the column and rafter attatching at a knee joint along with haunching. It also shows the cleat and girt and how they are attatched to the column. It is interesting because this is the first time i have seen the cleat come out the side of the column and not out the back of it. You can also see how the girt is bolted to the concrete panels to hold them in place and also the column is bolted to the panels to hold them in place which is different because we were told there always needed to be a girt involved but obviously not.

This is just a close up of the girt abd how it os fixed to the concrere panels to hold them in place.

This shows the knee joint, column, rafter and how the girts come out each side of them to hold up the concrete panel. There is only one girt around the whole building which is not how we were shown in lectures to do it but it works quite well as the slabe is connected solidly at the base and then again at the top of the wall i see no need for extra girts as the panel would have quite alot of reinforcing in it.

This just shows more of the building and how the girts go between the columns to hold the panels in place.

This picture shows the difference between the new and the old parts of the building. The newer section of the building is on the right where the older part is on the left. They are slightly different methods of doing the same thing but on the right they are using trusses instead of I-beams. The trusses in this case done have the spanning capabilities of the beams.

This shows how the truss is bolted onto the concrete panles to hold them inplace and you can kind of see how it is connected to the column.

This is where the edge of the old building used to end. You can see the cleates still on the column which the girts would have attatched to. You can also clearly see the connection between the truss and the column and the difference between the old and new structure.

This just shows the span of the new part of the building. It has quite a large span.

And this show the connection between the rafters at the apxe or ridge of the roof.

Site visit

This is the second site visit i did to a completed building. This building is a performing arts building for my local high school. It is quite interesting as it uses a both structural tilt-up concrete panels and steel framing for the walls.

This is a picture of the exterior of the building. You can see that the side walls are made from tilt-up concrete panels and the end of the building is made from a steel frame with metal sheet walling attatched to it.

This picture shows the interior of the building. You can see how the rafters attatch to the concrete panels at the wall then behind the shade cloth attatched to the wall on the right is steel framing which then has girts and sheet walling attached to it. I was unable to take a photo of this because it had shade cloth over it and you couldnt see through it.

This picture shows up close how the steel rafter is bolted into the concrete panel which supports it and holds up the roof. You can also see the girt or purlin (im not sure which one it would be in this case as it is attatched to the rafter but then attatched to the wall and not the roof) attatched to the rafter and then bolted onto the concrete panel.

This picture is a little hard to see due to the bad lighting and my camaras flash didnt reach that high(had lots more photos but most of them were really hard to see because of this same reason). But the picture is of a bend in the rafter and how there are two purlins each side of the bend for each angle of roofing and also the two lots of bracing which is also required for each angle.

Research

For a project we went around to a fair few shops and manufactors of roofing and steel products. We went to a heap of steel shops and steel fabricators and steel engineers and everything we could think of or were told to go n see because they might have something. We also went to a couple of roofing companys. After a day of driving round we found out that no one really had anything on anything exept for bluescope lysaght who gave us 3 really helpful booklets on roofing and walling systems. One Steel or metaland also gave us a booklet on steel sizes which wasnt so helpful for the poster but was helpful when it came to making the model. Below are just pictures of the front covers of the booklets.

Model Under Way

This is my model for the project. It is a model of how the roof connects to the purlin and how the purlin then connects to the rafter. This is it before i paint in and also before i have fully put it together. I disconnected the purlin from the cleat so it made transportation easier but i will bolt this back on when i get it into uni.

This the I-beam and cleat before if has the purlin and the rest of the roofing structure attatched to it. I got all the measurements from a steel mass book i got from one steel or metalland (they seem to be the same thing as far as i can tell). I found it hard to know which I-beams and size purlins i needed to use as it was all done in how many kg per meter not in actual spanning distance. So i just took a stab as i did not know how to work out how many kg per meter my roof would weigh.

This is just the I-beam again form a different angle.
This it the roof part of the model looking from the top. I know that this is actually incorrect as this roofing would not be appropriate on this size building as the corrigations are not big enough to drain the water fast enough. But this was the closest sheet roofing i could find to what would actually be used and was something i could afford.

This is a picture of the z-purlin, mesh and insulation. The z-purlin still needs to be painted but after it is painted it will bolt to the cleat which it attatched to the I-beam. The insulation is also not the correct insulation for this type of construction as it has no sarking on it. But to get insulation with sarking on it you had to buy a $90 roll of it which i could not afford where this insulation was much cheaper. Also the piece of wood you can see to the right of the picture would not actually be there. It is just there to hold the mesh and insulation to the sheet roofing otherwise it all sages and doesnt look very good.

Site Visits

These pictures are all pictures from two site visits i did for the assignment. They were in different stages of construction and using slightly different building methods and were also very different sized buildings. However both were very interesting and helpful.

This first picture just shows where the steel ub attatches to the pad footing and how it is bolted down.

This shows the rafters lying on the ground on site ready to be lifted into position.



This just shows two columns with a single girt in between them and also the cleats below it to which the other girts will b attatched.


This was the builders tightening up the bracing. It was quite interesting to see how they did this.


These are purlins and girts on the ground also ready to be lifted into position by a crane.

This shows how the extirior cladding is attatched to the girts and then how the girts attatch to the cleats and columns.

This shows the roofing in its different stages. First they but up all the framing then they run the wire mesh out over the top of that to make sure that when they put the roofing materials on they dont fall through before they are attatched. After this they lay the insulation and then put the sheet roofing straight over the top of that. Its inportant that the insulation and sheet roofing go down at the same time as the insulation can not really get wet.

This just shows how the rafter has the cleat welded onto it then the purlin just bolts straight onto that then the mesh is just run over the top of all of them.

This is basicly the same picture as the last exept the roofing has been completed and it now has insulaton and sheet(which you cannot see in this pic) roofing over it.

This picture shows how the precast tilt up concrete panels are connected to the slab. Seeing how the panels worked was really interesting and helpful.

This shows the connection between two concrete panels and the filler that they put in between them.

This pic just shows the insulation on the roof waiting and ready to be layed out.

This picture shows the tops of the precast tilt up concrete panels and how the crane connects to them to lift them into place.

This picture just shows the different stages of the roofing. Tou can clearly see mesh, insulation and sheet roofing in this picture.

This is the apex of the roof and is just showing the capping to make shure the roof does not leak.

This shows the roof in all stages with the sheet roofing on then with just with mesh layed and then with nothing but the framing up.

This is a picture that kind of shows how the sheet roofing is connected to the purlins. This device is attatched to the purlins then the sheet roofing just clicks onto it and is help down which means no bolts are required to go through the actual roof.

This another picture of the connection between concrete panels but this is before the filler has been put in.

They also let us look at some of the drawings for the project and this is just a picture of a page of details which show how the concrete panels will connect to everything.