On November 20 the slab for our house was poured, a process made considerably easier by using a concrete pump truck. As you can see in the picture below, it was quite tall.
A concrete truck backs up to the pump truck and dumps concrete into a box at the back of the pump truck.
From the bucket the concrete is pumped through the boom, controlled remotely by the operator in the picture below, using the box attached to his waist. The operator starts and stops the flow of conrete and moves the boom at the direction of the guy holding the hose where the concrete comes out. Our builder says that the extra cost for the pump truck is about the same as the savings in labor for the people it would take to move the concrete to places not reachable from the concrete truck.
It was a very long day for the crew that worked on the slab. The 12 guys on the crew were on site by 6:30 am, and the last 6 crew members did not leave until 9:30 pm. By lunch time all of the beams had been poured along with our MBR area, the dining area and part of the kitchen area.
Michael grilled some sausages for sausage wraps that the crew enjoyed during a brief break for lunch.
The weather was almost perfect for most of the day, warm with very little wind, until several gusts of wind dumped quite a few leaves from the nearby pecan trees onto the wet concrete. The crew did a good job trying to remove the leaves as they continued to work the concrete, but I'm sure we will have a few embedded in the slab somewhere.
Much of the afternoon was spent smoothing and finishing the concrete in the main part of the house. The crew used a wide assortment of trowels, each with its own purpose, and machines like the ones below to smooth and extract moisture from the concrete.
The last portion of the slab to be poured was the porches. The porches are 1 1/2 inches lower than the main living area and could not be poured until the main living area was dry enough to allow the crew to remove the forms between the main living area and the porches. The screen porch was poured using a Bobcat to get the concrete from the truck to where it was dumped in the screen porch area.
And, finally, the rest of the porch area was poured by backing up the concrete truck to the end of the porch area, unloading the concrete and then moving it with lots of muscle power to spread it over the entire covered porch area. The following video is indicative of the way the concrete crew worked. We were very impressed with their work. They not only worked very hard all day, but seemed to be enjoying what they were doing and wanting to do a good job.
And, finally, the rest of the porch area was poured by backing up the concrete truck to the end of the porch area, unloading the concrete and then moving it with lots of muscle power to spread it over the entire covered porch area. The following video is indicative of the way the concrete crew worked. We were very impressed with their work. They not only worked very hard all day, but seemed to be enjoying what they were doing and wanting to do a good job.We have not seen the slab in the daylight since it was all poured and finished, but we are confident that we will be pleased with the way it looks.
Now we need to wait at least a week for the slab to cure. It is anticipated that the first floor exterior walls will start going up on Monday, December 1.
Stay tuned.
2 comments:
Holy cow. Do they bring all the equipment in from Austin every day? That's a lot of machinery and man power.
Have any of the workers taken a dip in the River yet?
Your blog is going to be like a book about how to build a house. I love it!
Post a Comment