No, he moved on to another idea - using wall radiators powered by an evacuated tube solar collector, via a storage tank. There's also that other current post with the guy who wants to power radiators with a wood heater, that's another variant. Wall radiators are used heaps in Europe but are inconvenient - they take up valuable wall space. There are skirting board types around though. And it beats messing with the slab - but if you do go the slab route, how about $300 to get a structural engineer to look at the plans first.
You'd expect in theory that the mesh is midway in the slab - that's probably how it would have been drawn on the plans, but whether that's what the builders actually did is a guess. They probably would have used bar chairs, so you could suppose from that what the likely height prior to the pour was (unless they did something unexpected), but then during the pour the concretors would have walked all over it, possibly springing some parts up and pushing other parts down. Your risk is mostly dependent on soil type - how much the ground moves seasonally. Clay would be the most suspect.
Just as well even the deep-earth types have moved away from mud brick and rammed earth buildings onto haybales and other insulated designs. My sister lives in a 1980s mud brick house in Victoria. Recycled bridge beams, cathedral ceilings, all that. Yeah, looks nice, but way too cold in winter, just can't get the place warm. Give me wall insulation any day.
Posted Tuesday 27 May 2014 @ 9:52:28 pm from IP
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