Thread: Japanese House

Both solid walls of my office rendered

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

From outside.

It would be safer if you placed a steel column up from the stair to the underside of the beam.

There is not a lot holding that whole corner up.

Make it a feature of the handrails

Or take all that corner down.

Here is the improvised detail. I'm glad to encourage creativity... if it's nice, and not stupid.

This is the tile chosen for the sidewalk surrounding the top floor. Non slippery.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

From outside.

It would be safer if you placed a steel column up from the stair to the underside of the beam.

There is not a lot holding that whole corner up.

Make it a feature of the handrails

Or take all that corner down.

Good advice, thanks. This is very light for a reinforced concrete, and nothing, beside a bit of cement and tiles is ever going to load it dowm.
I know it's useless, and I know it will never move... But it's in the planning to have stainless steel posts every step of the stairs, and where you indicated.
They are waiting for the tiles to go first before they come and do the "garde-fou", fencing ( in french it translate "a stop, a guard for crazies".

^
make the sure the post at the end of the beam is a substantial one.

The problem is that you have seriously reduced the strength of the support beam by cutting out the arch.

If the support beam has been designed as a cantilever (large diameter bars in the top of the beam) it may well be strong enough. My problem is that the quality of the placing the reinforcement in the correct position and bar size does not to be a strong point in the structures I have seen posted on this forum.

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

Anyway, when there is an architectural mistake made, put it in front of the stage! Underline it, it becomes interesting!

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

Do you see now why it's useless?

not on the plans?

I suppose you could wall in the steps, now you have it

Originally Posted by OhOh

The problem is that you have seriously reduced the strength of the support beam by cutting out the arch.

a beam like that can easily support itself, and it does have the arch beam too

Originally Posted by OhOh

I have seen posted on this forum.

so there we have it, a genius

Originally Posted by OhOh

^
make the sure the post at the end of the beam is a substantial one.

The problem is that you have seriously reduced the strength of the support beam by cutting out the arch.

If the support beam has been designed as a cantilever (large diameter bars in the top of the beam) it may well be strong enough. My problem is that the quality of the placing the reinforcement in the correct position and bar size does not to be a strong point in the structures I have seen posted on this forum.

Come on! reinforced concrete can hold itself up! Do you think that it's weaker than wood? This floor, as you could see earlier in this tread was first a 2" reinforced pre-cast concrete slab, then steel reinforcement was hand tied on top and poured in one shot. I did not need a big 6" X 14" beam under to hold itself up. There will be no bulldozer driving there. Even more useless is the outside beam, which has no function except to delemit the stairs.
DrAndy asks, what about the plans? I showed the plans, I asked about this, I was told "Maepalai".
I must also add that the plans I use with the teams I work with are not complete architect plans. They are never followed anyway!
They did not understand that the stairs would land there and this spot did not need extra strength, one, and that this stupid beam, the outside one, was not adding any strength to the floor at the landing site.
I even showed that they did not trust their work, they put bamboo support under the stairs while the red blocks wall was going up!

Look! I've build wooden stairs before, the 2 X 10 used on both sides were cut even more than the steel reinforced concrete, and they were only 2 to support the stairs, not 15-20 side by side, like this concrete that spans the whole width of the stairs.
These wood stairs are still up!
I know that cement has great compression strenth and little tension strength, this last is given by the steel, or by the bamboo, they both have the same expansion coeficient than cement, this combination changes cement into concrete.
I suppose that they have seen in the past weak stuctures because of a weak powder, too much water or poured on different days, or too much sand. I think that, to save a few bath, they used a mortar type powder, with lime in it and less cement, which weakened it then, rather than Portland cement in the right proportions.
I counted the number of buckets of sand, of rocks, I insisted, and insisted that there should not be too much water, and slowly, progressively, the team became used to it and by the time the second floor was poured over the precast concrete, it was done properly. I think.
I hope...

An excellent and well presented thread here Old Monkey.

A pleasure to read, the photographs are excellent too.

Green on the way, well done.

The wall stopping the way to the bedroom is down!

I wondered why this metal almost on top of the wall...

So finally, to hold the one layer small brick wall up while they were sawing the other wall and putting it down, one sees the reason for the metal rods...

From the bedroom, passage on the right, walk-in on the left.

Great views from your house, pure nature, and thanks for sharing the build with us, I log in to your thread every day. I think once everything is finished you will have a very happy and relaxed life in such a beautiful setting.

OM, disregard OhOh's comment. I believe he/she simply had a brain fart and instead of shaking his/her head to clear, committed it to type. You certainly have made a very interesting thread, I enjoy reading it whenever you get time to update it. Great photos too. My thought about the two beams in question is if they become a problem simply remove both, they serve no practical purpose unless you intend to close the stairway.

Keep up the great work!

Jim

Thank you, will do.
From the bedroom, the new entrance.

The office walls are rendered, inside and out.

Lining room and office.

The cement and rendering should be completed in less than ten days. This means that the team can be divided, one part doing wood work, shojis, windows, and the other starting on the natural swimming pool. The plot thickens...
I will have to keep making decisions on my own. This is the hard part, I'll have to live with those, and so will my wife, and she's in Quebec for another month.
Tiles and paint colors, flooring, appliances and more.
I had to temporarily forget about tatamis on the floors, much too expansive. I will find a solution at leisure later, but I worry about the quality of the sound in cubes with echo generating surfaces. There are solutions, but I'm not decided on which to adopt.

This will be used as the bedroom passage, and bathroom.
The bathtub will be against the back wall.

Living room corner, late afternoon, note the light.

Sorry, wrong old picture. Now it's more like this.

not sure if you have answered this already. but is there a reason the ceilings were done before the internal walls?nothing appears central. and light fixtures are in the wrong place.

The house, viewed from the other side of the valley.

Same same, with zoom.

Originally Posted by splitlid

not sure if you have answered this already. but is there a reason the ceilings were done before the internal walls?nothing appears central. and light fixtures are in the wrong place.

Why not? The ceilings were done in my absence, but I'm very happy with them. They are suspended... They don't need walls.
The cement work is done first, then, the wood, don't forget that shojis will constitute the separations between rooms, that means sliding doors and sliding windows.
The central square of nine will be an orchids room, available to look at on all sides by sliding a door or two out of the way.
The only solid walls are on both sides of my office, I have bookcases and paintings to put there, and the wall separating the kitchen from the bathroom.
So, be patient, light fixtures will be centered when the different rooms are defined by rice paper latticed shojis.