Well, to start the day off, I think I mentioned in my last blog about "forgetting" something... Yes, to say the least... After about 36 hours with very little sleep, I am in bed at about 1AM thinking about the next day, when I realize something, I have forgotten to put in any penetrations for all the GFI outlets that are around the house. Also, the penetrations for the outdoor kitchen sink water supply, and the outdoor kitchen propane supply...
This guy is an idiot, you are saying... Well, hmmm... yup...
So that certainly doesn't make me sleep any better. Even though I know it's not a really big deal to drill holes for these things through the concrete. It's something that's really not that hard to fix.
So, despite the lack of sleep, 30 degree temp, extreme darkness, and the mountain lion spottings I have heard so much about... Off to the lot at 4 AM.
This is, of course, after I try to fashion a piece of 3/4 inch schedule 40 into a drillbit, by creating teeth in one end, and gluing an endcap on the other with a 1/4 inch bolt drilled through the endcap. My thinking I can hook my cordless drill up and pop holes through the styrofoam nice and easy... Well, what I end up doing was somehow slicing the top of my thumb down across my fingernail with a drillbit... Ouch... Blood... What does this do to attract mountain lions??
Ok, screwed that thing up because the bolt wasn't centered in my haste, and that was the only 3/4 end cap I had in my garage...
So it's cold, dark, lonely, things are blowing around in the darkness, I am hunched over my bloody pipe with my back to the woods (mountain lion). I figure at any second he is going to take a bite out of my ass... It's just like my childhood fear of the "Deeps," which in my child's mind was your basic standard PO'ed buffalo... who had figured out a way to get under my bed.
I think you get the picture...
Oh, I ran my skillsaw every once in a while to keep the critters at bay... Do not EVER walk up behind a guy on a cold moring at a jobsite who has a skillsaw in his hand, you have no idea what he is thinking...
Anyway. I am done by 6 AM so I head back home to roust the kids out of bed so they can head to school... I am much braver when I am a Dad, and even braver with the sun up...
Yes, another pumper truck. Here he is stretching out to make sure he can reach the back walls. Actually the other side walls in this case. He is about 2 foot short on the master bedroom walls. So the ICF crew gameplan is to attach a long rubber feeder hose to the pumper outlet, then they can pull that out to close the gap while they pour that wall. In addition, they have attached an S shaped piece and a flow restrictor above that to help slow down the concrete as it comes down the pipe.
I had thought that the far walls would be the most problematic. But in fact, nothing is easy in the concrete business. Illustrated here is when they are pouring fairly close to the pumper. Over 135 feet of boom, 70 feet up, and 70 feet down.. Yes, fairly soupy concrete falling down a 70 foot slope into a relatively flimsy foam form (even though the foam is pretty dang tough). To make matters worse. They are filling fairly little spaces, like maybe only a few feet above the top of a window. So what happens is that you are fast running out of places to put the concrete, and yet you have 70 feet of it still to come... This can make for a mess.
They poured the forms in basically two passes. 1/2 of the wall at a time. There are lots of reasons to do this. The most important is that the pressure of concrete is tremendous, so the bottom of the forms are under a lot of stress. Also, the bottoms of the windows have an access channel in them that can allow the concrete to bubble out. By letting the bottom half of concrete set somewhat, these issues are greatly reduced.
This is the bottom of the window. The channel is there so they can make sure the forms get full of concrete underneath the window itself. You can see a little 2x4 sitting there. I was wondering what these were for until I saw them in action. As the concrete comes roaring in, and eventually up and out of these channels, they shove the 2x4 down into the channel between the webs to stop the flow. Sometimes they do this in time, and sometimes not. What you see here is a minor mess compared to others... Don't worry, though, the concrete that gets spilled all gets cleaned up... The ICF crew brought some extra guys that day. There is a lot to do behind the scenes, and everybody played a part. Matt was manning the pump hose and directing things (it was loud everywhere, so there is shouting in at least 2 different languages, and sometimes choice words are spoken). Matt's right hand man was relief pitcher on the hose, and scanning ahead and behind for obstacles. The other full time ICF guys were behind the operation adjusting the bracing to get the walls plumb and straight. Yes, you can move a 20,000 pound wall. More crew behind them constantly cleaning and working the windows. The pumper truck guy is right there with his remote control unit, and very precise I might add. The concrete truck driver is adjusting the flow of concrete from his truck to keep the hopper full.
It's like a concrete orchestra... Directed in a working man's style, and accented with a Spanish cuss word or two...
OH, my part was to worry about stuff. So I worried about the road, worried about the weather, worried about the guys falling off the platform, worried about blowouts... All the while I held a shovel (OK, sometimes I helped clean up concrete spills).
There was absolutely no chance that mountain lion was going to approach this operation...
Wait... This pumper boom looks different, you say... Yes, a very precise observation. Indeed, our first pumper truck had a boo boo and had to go home. Leaving me an extra 1/2 yard of concrete in my washout to deal with, and the ICF crew an extra 2 hour day while waiting for the new pumper to be flown in from Houston. The second pumper, also a German, worked sooooo much better. Here, you can see the little arrangement of S, restrictor, and hose at the end. They are between trucks here and pouring the first round of the Master Bath, which was the 14 footer.
Here I am standing in the same spot. Just moved the camera down so you can see where all this is coming from. The wall in the distance is the 10 footer that seperates the garage from house. Pretty much blocks the view of concrete pumper and truck. Thus the reason for the pumper operator to be on remote control so he can see the action on this end... As well as have nice polite discussions with the crew about things ;-)
So, I am of course obsessed about my road. Why?? Because it is the supply line for everything that happens here. The second pumper truck was an additional 2x pass at 100,000 pounds, plus the 7 concrete trucks at 10 cubic yards each. The road held up pretty good. At the end of the day, I was able to move the stiff concrete from the washout into the ruts, which will further support them for whatever happens next (lumber and hungry carpenters). Then, when the 2nd pumper left he dumped his hopper right in the center of my road, which allowed me to shovel that around here and there. By tonight (I write this a day later) I could move things around with a shovel and get them pretty flat again, as we are expecting mucho rain tomorrow, I would rather it didn't pool in those tracks...
Matt and crew came back today bright and early and worked all day to remove bracing. They left at the end of the day almost finished, and will be back Saturday to do some final touchups... The conrete walls by my eye appear extremely straight, and I could even put a level on them and check them for plumb, but neither matters, for these walls can only be moved by whatever lies below...
A special thanks to Matt and his ENTIRE crew. Proactive, thinking, problem solving, professional, hard working, I could go on...
How about a picture of that mountain lion... Here he is... disguised as a gypsy.. He is hungry, though, and for any future contractors that litter on the job... Know that this attracts mountain lions for sure... Mountain lions can't roar like other big cats, they kill in complete silence ;-)
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