The unseen Hero.......Well....One of them.

It's probably underneath your feet right now.  It's in most buildings.  Our unseen hero is re-bar.  Re-bar is a metal rod that is used to help strengthen cement.  Our new building has about 2 tons of it in the foundation.  This is just a picture blog showing all the re-bar we've bent, cut and put together to make the various pads (or mattes) for the foundations of our building.  There are also a few pictures of other 'unsung' hero's of our building project.  With out our maintenance staff we won't even have footings yet

This would be a matte.  A bunch of re-bar put together in a grid.  This specific size of matte we had to make 44 of.  

Not to be confused with matte,  this is Larry.  Not the re-bar,  but the guy in the blue shirt.  Larry was one of our crew that was blessed with the job of cutting and placing the rods in a grid.  They are then twisted together with a kind of Industrial twist tie.   

After a few times we decided to make a jig to place the rods in.  This made the process a lot quicker.  This is Dave.  He and Jackie spent a few nights in the shop after work putting these together.    

This is Jackie doing more twisting.  

More twisting

    Next is a few pictures of the actual re-bar in place.  All the work that goes into these mattes and towers and they just get covered with cement in the end.  It's a Shame.

This is a tower.  It's tied to the Footer (which is at the bottom) with those twisty ties.  This re-bar will help keep this tower strong when the wieght of the building is eventually sitting on top of it.  

The next few pictures are of the mattes.  Each wider spot in the footer is where a tower or pylon will be.  These will be what the building sits on.  That's why it's so important to have our unseen hero in the cement.