This Time the Pouring Is Concrete

Monday, March 27 was the day for part two of pouring the concrete slab. Steve and his crew arrived early in the morning to get things ready. As workers prepared the metal forms needed for the second story deck footings a question arose regarding their location. Steve noticed that the location of the deck supports varies from one page of the plan to another. It became apparrent that the holes that hd been dug are not far enough towards the front of the house. If left in their current location, the deck will not be long enough to reach the area where the stairs lead to the roof top deck. Fortunately, Steve noticed the discrepancy and new holes were dug in the correct locations.

The next problem is that the concrete company doesn't want to send out their trucks. It rained over the weekend since Rob put in the metal road plates and the concrete rep saw the road. They assumed the road is in bad shape and didn't want to get another truck stuck. Steve assured them the road is in better shape than the last pour and convinced them to come see for themselves. The road is approved and finally the trucks begin arriving. The photo shows how well the road plates worked. One helpful benefit of using the plates was that the concrete trucks driving over them did a great job of compacting the road base and dirt used to repair the soft section so it is now in great shape.

For most of the pour, the concrete trucks dumped their load into a pump system that used augers to push the concrete through a hose. The photo shows a close up of the concrete going into the hopper. For the garage they were able to skip the pumper and go directly from the truck. Getting the garage poured at the same time as the house was one benefit of this being a two step process. Since they had already poured the front of the great room, there was time to do the garage on the second pour. Apparently, garages are not always poured the same time as the house, but done at a later time. Given all the hassles with the road, it was good to get it done when the road plates were in place and the road was passable.

The second round of concrete was butted up against what was poured the first time. We've been assured that this should work fine. In the photo showing the concrete being smoothed you can see where the old pour meets the new in the lower left corner.

We were really lucky to get the pour fit in between rain storms. At the end of the day, just after Steve's crew had finished with the slab, another storm came in. This was the biggest storm yet. After this storm fhe condition of even road 406 would have been a problem for the concrete trucks.