As the blocks go up, the difference between the 12th and the 10th course don’t look quite as dramatic as the difference between the 0th and the 1st course or the difference between the 2nd course and the 4th. But there are differences, some which can be seen, and some which must be discovered.
For example, after the 11th course had been completely the outer wythe needed to be grouted to continue the concrete fill down to the last grouted level (which I believe was just below the 8th course). The grout did use up some of our sand pile:
Unfortunately it’s difficult to tell from that picture that the pile is about 25% smaller than last week. Nevertheless, there can be no question that the blocks were grouted, extending the bond of these blocks all the way down to the building’s footings.
Here you can see the wall as the two wythes now reach 8′ tall, the 12th course:
Things are also starting to get a bit more complicated, as the electrical plan and the masonry plan begin to interact. Here you can see some lighting conduits that are going to feed their way up to the soffit in the Music Room. Ultimately the soffit will contain downlights (illumination of the walls and floor under the soffit) and uplights (illuminating the low and high block patterns of the frieze. This is the easy part (so far):
If you look really closely in the next picture you can see a hole in the rightmost full block of the 12th course. Through that hole will pass some power conduits to the soffit. The more complex connections will be where power feeds up through the bond beam that will run around all the other Music Room walls at the 12th course. I’ll explain with pictures when we get to that point.
And a bunch more block that’s positioned to become part of the western wall of the Music Room, exposed inside the Loggia:
I hope we get them laid up quickly tomorrow—the weather forecast says we’re going to have rain from Thursday evening through Wednesday of next week. Good for the ground, but not good for the schedule.