Design of Floor

For the floor system I had found a way of using the 'belly' of the brick to make bridges between pillars of 3. In the best cases, the brick just simply sits exactly where it needs to go, and all I have to do is fill in the gap with mortar. The wedge shape created between the vertical and horizontal bricks even allows me to fill in the mortar without using plugs from the underside. When it works, it works really well. It's hard to get the exact right spacing over the entire floor, though, so I often end up having to adjust the distances.

After I had thought of this, I thought of offsetting rows of these bridges to make diagonal channels through the floor. This also worked well, because a pillar is about the same length as a horizontal brick.

I came to a problem when I realized that all the channels need to reach the chimney somehow. I somehow needed to make bridges between channels. Another reason I wanted to get rid of some pillars was that I don't have too many bricks left.

Initially, I thought, why don't I just use three bricks end to end, and span them between two pillars like in the other case? Looking back now, I'm not sure why I thought that would be a good idea. Joining end to end is probably the weakest way to span, and I am not using the shape of the brick to my advantage. I thought I could use the resin to prefabricate these beams but the resin is not magic.

I finally decided to use pillars of half-bricks in some places. The shape of the halves means that they can be wedged in place between two pillars and still provide some sort of support for the horizontal bricks.