October 2 & 3, 2007—The floor is poured!

I arrived at the site about 7:45 am on Tuesday, October 2nd to witness the pouring of the floor for our house. This was a momentous day and I came home just exhausted even though I did nothing except stand around and watch. A word of warning, there are 5 pages of pix, so if you are not intensely interested in concrete, don’t feel like you have to read the whole date.

Driving toward the site on the flats below, I could see the pump truck at the site. It seemed impossibly huge, even dwarfing our huge bay tree. Here is what I saw when I drove up. The sun had not come up yet and there was a concrete truck backed up to the pump.

Walking past the pump truck, I was even more amazed at how huge it was. The pump operator later told me that this pump has a reach of 150 feet!

 
I went up on the bank to get a good shot of the action. Here you can see that they have already poured the library and guest room and bath and are into the living room with the pump.
There were always several things going on at once. In the rising sun, here you see the concrete finisher and his crew as well as Jasmine’s regular crew, plus a few extra guys, working on the pour. While one man runs the pump, several of the crew spread the concrete out. On the very left, you see Matt, the concrete finisher, tamping the concrete in.
Here is the wet concrete. Isn’t it red??!!! I love the color and hope that as it dries, it doesn’t lighten up too much.
I love this picture because of the how the sky reflects in the water on the wet concrete. On the right you see one of Jasmine’s crew taking the braces off the tie-down bolts. These bolts were held to the form with blue plastic pieces which kept them in the right place. Now, after the slab is troweled flat for the first time, those plastic supports need to be removed.
Here is another concrete truck being guided toward the pump rig by the pump operator. The trucks backed up on my beautiful DG apron in front of the guest cottage and destroyed the compaction. We will have to redo it when we put gravel in the driveway before the rains start.
Here is the truck backing up to the pump rig.
The pump operator guides the truck driver so the chute is right over the hopper on the pump. Notice how the pump is draped in what looks like tarps. This is a custom made heavy-duty tarp apron—which velcros together—to keep the pump clean. I saw the operator at the end of the pour cleaning the apron carefully. The lid of the hopper has a tarp sleeve which completely covers it front and back. If you saw this rig on the road, you would never guess that it had even been near concrete, much less was a concrete pump.

There was a lull in the arrival of the trucks, so I wandered over to the cottage to look at the finished floor. I love the color, but there are definite lines and roller marks.

(I needed to talk to Janver about this, but actually on Wednesday, he told me that the painter was aware of the issue and was working to solve it. Evidently, the slab soaked up the stain so fast that they didn’t have a chance to feather the darker places before they were dry.)

Here you get a better idea of the color. It looks terrific with the paint, even the purple looks better next to this color.
October 2, 2007—page 2 October 3, 2007
October 2, 2007—page 3    
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