2011-10-28 Shed Foundation Pour

Shortly after 7, Manuel of Five Stars Pumping, arrived with the pump and set up.

Around 7:30, the truck, from Shamrock Materials in Petaluma, about 5 minutes away, showed up.

We all stood around watching do his magic, swinging around that hose full of concrete like it was a garden hose.

While the truck continued to feed the pump.

Manny poured the footings first, while Loren (my neighbor, and owner of Blue Moon Building) and Aldo (his assistant, who was obviously still learning) shook the rebar and banged on the outside of the forms to work the bubbles out of the sides of the concrete.

And as we almost got around to the end of the footings, we ran the first truck, 9 yards, dry.

We debated for a bit, measured how much we thought we needed, said "6½ yards", and then at the last minute said "let's buy an extra half yard, just in case".

So we stood around waiting for the next truck, which finally arrived (with the same driver, whose name I forget). Meanwhile, Loren, sensing that I was feeling like I had nothing to do, handed me a rake and said "when we're screeding the concrete, you pull out the big lumps with the rake, make sure we don't get too much piled up behind the concrete."

I grabbed the rake, stepped into the forms, and Manny said "you only need to do that if the pump operator screws up. You won't need it." Sure enough, I didn't.

Just a picture of Manny's truck so I had all of his numbers in one place:

Then we started finishing. Loren ran a float over the concrete, to give a basic smoothness:

And then we sat around and waited for it to start to set. Once Loren and Aldo started to actually surface it, running over the concrete with a magnesium trowel to push down the gravel and bring up the cemen t, and then a steel trowel to actually put the finish on it, all of the little variations were visible, so they worked the hole space flat.

We ended up with half a yard left over.

And this is cutting in the gap so that when the concrete cracks it'll crack down this line.

After several passes of finishing, we decided it was done.

Final damage: bought 16 yards, poured 15.5 yards. $350 for the pump, a little over $2.2k for the concrete, I haven't gotten Loren's invoice yet. If I included the $450 or so for the rebar and materials, looking back on it, it may have been a good idea to go for the $5.5k that I got quoted to do the whole thing. On the other hand, I know that the footings are all at least 18" wide, 20+" deep, the surface of the slab is at least 6" thick, and the rebar is tied at every joint and at 1' centers.

Category:Dan Lyke life Category:Workshop Category:10 Mission