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.