At least that's what my little sister said, at 4000 pounds per cubic yard.
To put yesterday in words would be impossible. Crew showed up at 0700, and then spent the better part of 3 hours getting things ready... closing off the drainage trenches, shoring things up, moving my precious orange fence around... It was pretty cold still so I was happy to wait a few hours so we wouldn't be pouring sub 40 degree concrete. By the time the pumper showed up, and then finally the concrete behind him, it was approaching 11 AM and mid 50 degree temps under a beautiful purple/blue sky... Perfect everything...
Let me say that I don't think you can run an operation this big (and don't get me wrong, I'm not running it, I was a spectator for this one...) and not have problems. Nothing in the concrete business appears to be small or light. Everything you can touch is heavy, sharp, wet, or nasty. The guys that do this work amaze me. It's one thing to see a 24 year old guy down there, but some of these guys are approaching 50 and do this every day. They are strong, but ultimately only the smart ones survive it... You can see it in how the older guys work. They are more patient...
So yes, a few problems. At one point a concrete truck got stuck by backing too far into the washout, which we were able to fix by moving some plastic around so the trucks didn't have to back up so far. And at the end of the day, the pumper had some trouble getting off the site. He weighs 80,000 pounds. His front axle is a double steer, and a rear twin tandem. He gets about 6 mpg in diesel down the road. I found out the hard way that he is completely covered in oil (actually a release agent) that keeps concrete from binding to him. He looked clean, but by the time I climbed up on top I had realized my mistake...slippery.
An impressive sight. He has a remote control pack of switches, which he uses to control his arm, about 130 feet out there in this case. I can't remember the actual rating, but he was telling me that pumpers are measured from the ground to the boom as it is standing straight up. Which he actually had pretty far up in the air at one point while getting his boom uncurled.
The concrete supplier started out slow, but by the end of the pour it was one right after the next.
My red tubing took a whoopin' for sure. The concrete falls from the high point in the boom, but mostly that last 10 feet through the rubber hose on the end, and it is flying fast as it comes out the end. You can be splattered with concrete at 30 feet away... All that weight hitting the tubing, and then the guys standing on the cables and tubes while they moved it around was abusive to say the least. Yet, it had to be done, so I nervously watched my pressure gages from about 25 feet (yea, you got that one, about 5 feet too close). Even today the pressure is still holding on all 4 manifolds. Although I do have one suspect that is about 2 PSI lower than the rest??? In retrospect we probably should have tied the tubing down with wire instead of cable ties. The reason we didn't was that the engineers were balking at ANYthing being tied to the cables. So the compromise was the cable ties, as they wouldn't be strong enough to resist the eventual tensioning of the cables (7 days from now).
My fear with the tubing is that although it didn't break, I am pretty sure it got moved around significantly. Could be enough to get it under a wall surface, where it could get poked by a framing nail. The other problem could be that it got kinked over the top of a cable. That being said, I never witnessed either while watching the pour.
For those interested in a radiant system, I would suggest you tie with wire ties and a hand twister. I experimented with a pull twister but that didn't tie very good, and seemed better at breaking wire and launching them across the garage. The little 5 dollar twister would work well.
At one point, we had 13 guys out finishing. By the end of the night (about 10 PM) they were down to 3.
This is from the back of the house. I figured they would start the pour on the opposite side of the house and work towards the pumper, but I would be normally wrong. Turns out you want to set the concrete first that you want to work the finish the most on... Garage and porches. Yet at the same time, you also want to place the concrete above the floats so they can work on that as well. So they were really all over the place, and the management of the operation pretty much goes to the guy holding the hose at the other end.
Now, if you think he is just standing there watching the concrete come out, you would be wrong. The thing is moving around fairly wildly, and it's a minimum 100 pound push to get that hose to go anywhere. Ultimately it will only go if the boom operator moves it, so they are using hand signals back and forth as they go. I didn't notice it 'till the end of the day, but this guy was the only one to duct tape his pants where they go into his boots. Obviously he did this for a reason. They could dump a 10 yard concrete truck in a few minutes, and this stuff could bury you alive... or seriously get into your boots;-)
You can see the "waffle" effect of the beams well from up here. And I will never fall in one of these again.
Should have duct taped my movie camera to the end of this thing and had him twist that around up there in space...
Here are some finished shots from today...
The concrete "dowels" or rebar that you see sticking up is for the ICF walls. They 5/8 inch rebar spaced every 18 inches or so, and will tie the floor to the walls, mostly for shear forces, as I doubt there will be much tension. One advantage for sure of the ICF is it creates a "box" structure on both sides of the slab, which makes everything super strong...
By the way, my wife and I were in complete joy to find the simple act of walking around now on the house without cables, tubes, and ditches in the way. She is a tad challenged in the department of conceptualizing space, and I think she is now getting a real view of the shape and size of things, and we are likin' it. The kids were funny running around on the slab, and standing in their future showers pretending to be clean. I am still nervous to have them out there, though. Every piece of wood has nails in it, every rebar end as sharp as a razor, and if it's gray it's either concrete or mud, but you sometimes have to step into it to figure that out... Being city kids, though, this is a good experience for them.
And finally, the sad part... My road didn't hold up so well. Fortunately, my tube survived. Looks like I have to get a dozer back in to clean things up a bit... That's close to 5 million pounds of stuff up and down this road in 5 hours. That's abusive.
Enjoy the rest of your week... next monday... ICF begins... the big IGLOO... Looks like I'll have to have that road fixed before I can get another (even bigger) pumper in for that operation, but certainly a lot less concrete...
Keep checking back!
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