I have finished up the sketch plans that I was asked to draw up. The design is mostly the clients, I have basically put his ideas/wishes to paper and made it work. I am taking a drive this afternoon to present the drawings to him, and show him a sketch up model. Hopefully progress has been made, if all is approved i will move on to council submissions and working drawings.

Weekly Update

This week the design work was put aside and I worked on the garage addition. After completion I printed it out to show the client but he was busy at work so I emailed the drawings to him. A short while later I got a call from him and he was very impressed and happy with the drawings. He said he would print them later that afternoon to get quotes to do the work. That concludes my second successful private job this year.

First week of private work

This week I was approached to design, draught and do tender drawings for a new second dwelling. I spent about three hours with the client, discussing ideas, likes, dislikes, wants and needs for the house, and by the end of it all a rough sketch plan had been produced. I also had to draught a garage addition with a louvered roof. And to top it off I had to do layout drawings for our new kitchen so that we could get quotes for the cupboards. It was a very, very busy week indeed. I feel that a 9-5 job is much easier than working from home, although when working from home traveling isn't an issue.

I also got to visit an amazing house on Simons Town's mountainside.

1st week back, and last week at work

On returning to the office on Monday, we found out that our architect's health was not so well, but nonetheless the week started, and I was given the task of doing a rider plan for a carport submission, as the architect involved in that project had passed on. Re-drawing the existing plans was quick, but in reality the building was slightly different as some of the work on the plans had not yet been completed. Google maps' street view helped sort this out quickly, and the drawing was completed with shadows to help show the different planes on the facade.
On Thursday we went to Kirstenbosch gardens as a site visit and took time to analyze Untamed, and the sculptures around the garden.
Today we went to the office to give our boss a parting gift; a book called "Living Buildings". I spent the week looking for a suitable book for our architect, and he seemed to love it. He was very thankful for us, and we thanked him for the invaluable experience that he gave us in our second year. And with that, my 10 month practical is complete, and I will spend the rest of the year doing private work, and preparing for 3rd year.

                      

Weekly Update

This week our architect got us sketching and draughting again. I was assigned to do sketch plans for his daughter's house in Kommetjie, and come up with a design which did not make the new first floor look like an obvious add on. Desmond Jackson also finally visited our firm, and spent a long time talking to our architect, all seemed well.
I also had a meeting with the manager of Pennypinchers in Claremont, with regards to sponsorship for the MIP. He was very keen on the idea and agreed to give us the materials we required at cost price, but after seeing the list of materials, they unfortunately had no stock of the items we needed. If the list was given to me a bit earlier, they could have ordered what we needed for us. After this, he kindly gave me the details of their suppliers, who would be able to give us what we needed in the few days before our delivery truck leaves for St. Michaels, he also let me fax from their office.
I made a million phone calls to organise quotes and the like for the materials we needed, and finally got them all to the higher ups. I also was in contact with Baltic Timbers, The Pole Yard, and Michael Sedgewick for the better half of two days, organising the delivery and procedures.

And now it is time to prepare for block 3, all submissions and paperwork to be updated, exams to study for, and a design-build to accomplish.

Weekly Update

After being sick since Saturday after the MIP discussion at Thomas Patullo and then still playing paintball on Sunday, I was horribly ill on Monday and didn't go to work. On Tuesday I went to the doctor, he put me off for a full week. However, I could not rest at home, and ended up going back to work on Wednesday. Work in the office was slow, there wasn't a lot to do as our architect had important issues to attend to and all of the required draughting work was complete. I spent time doing a shelving assembly drawing for the MIP, and asked Rukiya to do the coat hanger drawings.

Open publication - Free publishing - More invervention

CTPL 3-man tournament

This Sunday I competed in the Cape Town Paintball League 3-man tournament. The previous night I had a high fever and was terribly ill, but felt slightly better on Sunday morning and left home at 6am.
The tournament was very exciting, with 8 professional teams and one team from JHB entered, and a massive 30x45m field to play on. The layout was very open, and with lanes everywhere it was easy to get shot out if you weren't fast enough. In total each team played 14 games, and the day ended with a short and sweet prize giving with many prizes handed out to all the teams. I only arrived home at 8pm, and by then was once again feeling very ill and went straight to sleep.
 

MIP discussion, Saturday 4-8pm 08/10/2011

It was requested that I be at a meeting/discussion for our MIP design-build on Saturday, so I gave up the time I had to complete my essay in order to attend.
The discussion turned out to be very fruitful, and I am happy with what the intended design for the school. I still require drawings to send to various sponsors, but the feelers have been put out and hopefully we will be able to receive some material for the build.
After the long trek home I had a high fever and felt terribly ill, and attempted to sleep it off, but only overheated and pained all night.
On the positive side I volunteered to do the joinery drawings for the coat hangers and shelving for St. Michaels, which I will have out later this week.

Weekly Update

This week I tweaked the 19 & 21 Princes road drawings, I had to correct the site dimensions as per the SG diagrams, and resolve the roof plan for the two dormer windows as they took away part of the structure for the A-frame type trusses. During the week we got taken to the first Prices road site, where they where making holes for the 7m long piles required as earlier in the year they had excavated too deep and into unstable earth. I also worked on a garage addition at home.

Weekly Update

This week involved minor tweaks to all of the projects which we had been working on recently. Time was spent tweaking the 19 & 21 Princess Road, and adding shadows to the sections and elevations of the Bantry Bay drawings. During this time I had the opportunity to save all of my work to pdf format, ready to add to my PSS portfolio.
This weekend we will be training for a speedball tournament thats happening on 9th October, so I will also be working on the MIP academic paper to have it ready before then.

Intasure Spring Regatta

I took Friday off to sail in the South African Sailing Flamenca class Nationals. Our team was determined to win, as winning this would give us our colors for sailing. The southerly wind was strong, and the sailing was close but we managed to win 1st place, by about half a meter.
Saturdays sailing was not great, I got seasick during the long waiting period between races, and we got three 3rd places, which removed all hope of winning the regatta due to total points - but we were tied with another boat for 2nd place, and we had to beat them.
Sunday was great, we got two 2nd places, which secured 2nd overall for our team. We almost had a 1st place, but I tripped a set of cleats and both sails came down while we were winning. My bad.
All in all it was a good regatta, and we went home with our silver medals and a Garmin GPS navigation system.

Weekly Update

This week I completed the 19 & 21 Princess Road council submission. The new lightweight first floor structure was much easier to draw this time around, as I am now familiar with it thanks to the Wesley Road job.
I added all the the council notes and specifications, as well as the additional notes council requested as ammendments for Wesley Road. All that is left now is for our Architect to check my work, and hopefully the plans will go through council without objection.

Weekly Update

This week started with the client for the Tokai job coming to see developement on the sketch plans, he has taken them to his mother and we are waiting for his approval before we go ahead with council submissions.

The rest of the week has been slow. Our architect has been in and out of the hospital this week, so we have been in the office doing as we see fit, and cathcing up on university work. I have completed all of my PSS, but, when attempting to access the folder on my flash, it gave a 'read error: file cannot be accessed.' which means its either corrupted or not there. I ran a disk check to fix errors on the volume, and it deleted several of my folders... no backups. Start over next week. At least I have my draughts in rough on paper. My MIP milestone 1 have been uploaded. I will continue tweaking it, but the submission is there. Proud of Part B.

Weekly Update

This week, the tracing paper fills the office as we explore layouts for the proposed sketch designs. It proved to be a difficult task, with the odd shape of the house not allowing for much communal space, posing the chance of classifying the addition/alteration as being a second dwelling.

We also took a drive by site visit of Princess Road. They had excavated too deep leaving no stable ground whatsoever for the basement, and a diggerloader stuck in the mulsh had to be lifted out using a crane. They had not yet started with the piles, as using piles is the only way to go ahead with the project at this stage.

The 2nd Avenue scheme had been revised, considering that not having heard from heritage western cape for several weeks, demolition of the existing structure may not be possible. So a scheme was planned around it, and we propose new layouts to the 15 units on the site so that the QS can cost the development and then a call can be made as to whether the project is viable or not. The layouts make good progress, alot of tracing paper being used once again to explore the layouts and to not get stuck to a screen.

Weekly Update

Again we tackled the Miller Road tender drawings for units 3 & 4, this occupied us until friday, when we started a new project - an addition/alteration to an existing house to accomodate for a client's mother, so that they could live in the same dwelling but be reletively seperate.

The first step was to draw the existing dwelling, of which we had a copy of a set of plans, drawn on linen, which never went to council.

Weekly Update

Miller Road tender drawings are progression slowly. The 1:50 drawing are to have the same information as the previous tender for unit 2, complete in every aspect in order for a builder to know exactly what to do, and for a tender to be able to give a complete pricing.

Our architect is very busy, so we are doing the best we can without asking too many questions. Otherwise progress is good, as we have the previous tender drawings to refer to, this is an accomplishable task.

Weekly Update

This week we worked on council submission drawings for the remaining units of the Miller Road site. While working on that, it was required for us to make alterations/revisions to the Constantia site as the client wanted a big change made - remove a large portion of the proposed alteration, to allow more space for parking and a more simplified basement structure. In the clients eyes, a quick change, but for us it involves 13 individual drawings and a very complex roof structure with various slopes which our architect must resolve.

After we hit a dead end with Constantia as we had done everything possible and only the roof was left to be resolved, we began with the tender drawings for unit 3 and 4 of Miller Road.

Weekly Update

This week I worked extensively on completing the Wesley Road council submissions.

The pressure is on. 4 days to complete everything. Our architect had to purchase the new NBS documents at an insane cost of R2400, to ensure that the timber frame structure's specification met the new council requirements.
This being done, the new first floor structure and staircase could be drawn up accurately with no guess work involved. And so after completely resolving the plans and sections, there was one day left before the client came to sign, and I managed to draw up all of the elevations, roof structure plan, site plan, notes, legends and annotations all in the few hours left before signing. "Looking good," was the comment I recieved. No tweaks, no adjustments, a job well done. I am very happy.

All was left to do after signing was coloring, and that didn't take too long. The weekend is a more than welcome reward after this busy week.

Gaul regatta results

We achieved an overall result of 2nd place in the regatta, and 1st in our division - so we have won provincial championships for this class.

Our great performance has earned us silver and gold medals, as well as a spot on board for national championships in September.

Now all that awaits a long week of work and studies.

Weekly Update & Gaul regatta

This week started off with Wesley Road's council submission. That beig said, the week is also ending short for me due to the public holiday and sailing regatta being held from then to the weekend. Racing starts tomorrow in the cold and wet, and my crew and I have to finish in 1st place of 35. Wish us luck.