Lift slab

Okay kiddo, picture lifting a heavy box, it’s hard to pick it up all the way off the ground by yourself, right? Well, imagine a very very very big and heavy box. Now imagine that we need to pick it up off the ground a really long way, like all the way up to the top of a skyscraper.

That’s where lift slab comes in! Instead of trying to lift the box all at once, we’ll do a little bit at a time.

Here’s how it works: first, we pour the concrete for the ground floor of the building, making sure it’s nice and flat. Next, we lay out metal cables (kinda like ropes) on top of the concrete. Then, we put foam blocks on top of the cables, kind of like a big puzzle.

Next, we pour more concrete on top of the foam blocks, making another floor. And then, we do it again! We lay out more cables on the second floor and add more foam blocks. Then another layer of concrete. And another one.

Now the really cool part happens. When we pour the very last layer of concrete on top, we connect the cables to a HUGE machine that’s kind of like a crane. This machine starts to lift the big box that we just made out of all the concrete floors we poured.

As the machine lifts, it pulls the cables through the concrete until the whole thing rises up off the ground! The foam blocks underneath each level of concrete keep everything in place, so it doesn’t topple over or break apart.

Once the machine has lifted everything up to the height we want, we just have to cut off the cables and take out the foam blocks. The floors are already in place, so we don’t have to use more machines or people to put them up one by one.

Lift slab is a really cool way to build big buildings really fast, without having to wait for each floor to be built one at a time.