Formwork Arrangements, Requirements, Materials Needed

In this tutorial, we will be talk on how to arrange formwork before placing concrete. We will discuss, what is formwork, formwork arrangements, requirements, used materials and how we did formwork works.

Do you dream of building your own house? Do you want some help with the formwork arrangement for the concrete structures? Then this article is for you.

In this article, we will be talk on how to arrange formwork before placing concrete. Okay, so now I will explain what is formwork, requirements, materials and how we did it.

Introduction to formwork

Formwork is a temporary supporting structure system, which provide casing to enable wet concrete, attain the shape required. Formwork must provide strength, stiffness and smoothness good shape at the concrete face. Its arrangement should be simple and external neatness was not required. It must be easy to strip after concreting.

Requirements for formwork

1. It must be built and erected so that they require shape, size position and finish of the concrete are obtained.
2. It must be strong enough to take the pressure or weight of the fresh concrete and any other loads, without distortion, leakage, failure or danger to workmen.
3. It should be design and constructed so that it can be easily and quickly erected and struck, so saving both money and time.
4. It must be able to strike without damage to the concrete or itself.
5. The arrangement of the formwork must provide access for the concrete handling and placing and equally important.
6. Joints between members must be tight enough to prevent grout leakages

Required materials for formwork

• 9 ,12 Or 15 mm thick-coated plywood sheets
• Adjustable jacks; acro jacks
• Galvanized steel pipes
• Adjustable "U" jack& " T " jacks
• Scaffoldings
• Centre plumb
• Form ties and crown nuts
• G.I clamps
• 2" × 2", 2" × 4", 4" × 4" Timber logs
• Wire nails & Concrete nails
• Power saw
• Sprit level

How formwork was carried out in our project

There are several steps in formwork workings.

Footing Formwork

As the soil was silty sand and the soil being saturated, the base of the footing was concreted. For that, a simple formwork was placed.

As mentioned earlier, footing formwork arrangements were placed after marking its boundaries on the base of the footing using the fixed pegs and marking cord as shown in figure 2.

Figure 4 depicts the formwork arrangement for footings which were placed on concreted base.

Column Formwork

The formwork is assembled on a temporary base. The formwork was put three sides together and partially completed formwork was set in place and added the fourth side later.

This method was used by the contractor in the site for setting column formwork as the reinforcement is already fixed in position. Formwork arrangement in site is shown in figure 5.

Special attention should be paid for the verticality of the formwork and it is done by measuring the perpendicular distance from the formwork to the Nylon thread as shown in the figure 6.