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October 2, 2007—The floor is poured!    page 3
Meanwhile, back on the west side, one of the finishing crew was running a motorized trowel over the already hardening floor. This was about 10:30ish and he could already stand on concrete that had been sopping wet a few hours ago.

The camera stops the motion of this machine since it is running at a kind of leisurely pace, but it it pretty amazing to watch.

In the master bath, Matt is tamping the concrete in. I know there is a term for this process, but I have forgotten what it is. It is amazing to watch because as he tamps, he slowly walks backwards kicking his footsteps full again as he goes.

Look at his position relative to the box for the bathtub drain.

In this picture he has stepped back and filled in his footstep and leveled it out.

Here you get a good shot of how they level the slab. The board on the left is sitting on wires which are hooked to pieces of rebar thrust through the void-form into the ground. The wires have been leveled off in advance using a string across the forms.

The concrete is pumped into the space between the form and the board and then screeded flat with a piece of 2 x 4 run between the board in the foreground and form edge.

The amazing thing is, this concrete looked like really good chili as it was being poured.

Coming down the home stretch. Not much left to pour, they are almost to Jim’s office. Next will be the laundry room and the wine closet and they they will be done with the house.
Here is how the slab looks after the machine trowel.
Once they finished pouring the main house slab, the pump crew went on to pour the footings for the veranda slab and courtyard walkways. These slabs will be a sandy yellow and poured later but the bases for the columns will be red and stick up through the yellow slabs.
Here is the way the slab looked after the final hand trowel. Contrast this picture with the one from last week taken from the same place—what a difference a slab makes.
Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the house, the second and third trowelings were taking place. The guy running the machine trowel goes first and following him are the two hand trowelers. You can’t tell from this picture, but the hand trowelers have skids that they kneel on while they trowel. As they work, they continually move their skids back and forth so that they don’t rest heavily in one spot on the still-drying slab.
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