bigrob

First the background: I want to build a house using CEBs, Compressed Earth Blocks. (If you want to know more about the CEBs check out thes link: http://www.adobemachine.com)/

They are considerably heavier than conventional building materials. Each block is 10"wide x 14"long x 4" thick. They will be stacked with the 10" side facing out and thus will make a 14" thick wall course. The exterior walls will be two courses thick with a small chase between them to allow for electrical and plumbing. The interior walls will be one course.

Each of the blocks weighs about 40 pounds. Stacked as stated above that will create a wall that weighs 14,400 pounds per 10' x 10' section for each course and thus a 28,800 pound 10' x 10' section for the double course.

My main question is: what is the formula to determine the thickness of the of footings and slab given the width of the walls and the weight?

Once the floor plan is finalized and the interior walls laid out and the lengths of the exterior walls determined I want to be able to estimate what the foundation work and materials are going to run me.

I would also like to build this with a flat top roof (a little slope for rain runoff of course,) and I would like the roof to be make of concrete. How do I do that? Do you pour it in forms in place or do you precast it in sections and then crane it into place? How thick can/should it be (I want it to be tornado proof?) What sort of support is required during construction and afterwards. The interior walls will provide some support but the rooms will be large and I am wondering if I will have to have support beams from the floor up or will I need support beams spanning from wall to wall at the ceiling (I-beams?)

Also should I use foundation support piers (like the foundation repair guys drive down to bedrock when they repair a broken or cracked foundation?) I was wondering if that would help support something as heavy as this house is going to be.

I just upgraded to IE7 with the svc packs and I cannot seem to get rid of one of the toolbars. It is the bottom one and it seems to only be there to annoy the heck out of me. It has a Star icon that links to Favorites Center, a plus sign over another star icon that links to adding a Favorite, and then a large blue tab that does nothing more than tell me the name of the page I already know I am on followed by a small blue tab that is empty. There were some small icons further down to the right but I removed all of these as they were just duplicates of what I have on the Menu Bar.

HOW do I make this entire bar go away? At Microsoft they said something about clicking on the Command bar in the top right portion of my screen. I have nothing with such a label and I have clicked or rested by cursor on every portion of all of the toolbars and get nothing with that name.

HELP!!!!

Thanks in advance!!!!

A

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What is your favorite mission organization or outreach? Who do you support and why?

The most amazing one I have found is Gospel For Asia. I had not heard of them until recently but it turns out they are one of the largest missionary organizations in the world. What I like best about them is that every single dollar I give to support missionaries goes to the missionaries. The staff at GFA all have to raise their own support. Not one penny of what I send for the mission work goes anywhere else. I just find that so refreshing.

http://www.gfa.org/gfa/

They have a free book that they will give you if you ask for it. Reading it changed my views on mission work and how it should be done, or rather on how it must be done. Check it out and tell me what you think.

May the Grace of our Lord be with you, now and always, may you stay blameless until He returns.

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