What are those funny strings? -- Part 2 of 3 -- Weeks 14 - 16

We hadn't been here very long when we took a little day trip down south to check out Sonoita, Patagonia, Nogales & Tubac as possible places to settle. We visited a development in Tubac with models & houses in a variety of stages of construction. Many of the foundations had these funny plastic cable things stretched across them. We had no idea what they were.


Now we know. They cover the cables that are structural support in a post-tension concrete foundation. Post-tension is used a lot down here because it does a better job of preventing cracking than rebar alone. The concrete is poured & the cables are stretched & tightened a couple of times as it sets over the following week.


We met the builder, Dave, at the site on Monday, the 15th (Week 16) & we got to see the interior structure of our foundation. Here are some pictures of post-tension in the raw.


This is a stack of cables inside their plastic sheaths, the little black forms that hold them up & I don't know what in the white bag.

Here are Trout & Dave discussing something in the kitchen.

This is a detail of the connection of the cables at the edges of the future slab.

This is a detail of the business end of a post-tension cable. You can see there is some rebar involved as well as the cables. What you can't see is that the cables are very greasy so that they can slide inside the the red plastic tubes.

And it was so clear, I couldn't resist this picture of Kitt Peak with the white telescopes on top.