This was the day of the seventh (and possibly the penultimate) concrete pour. However, several other notable things happened today. The blue duct was delivered. As you can see in Picture 1, it lives up to its name! This is a special, extruded plastic duct, that can be buried or run under the slab without degrading or being affected by the pressure of the material on top of it .
In addition, the scaffolding was all packed onto a long truck trailer (Picture 2). The amazing thing was watching this semi back down the road to the Tucker parking lot and then turn around (Picture 3).
Much of the process of pouring the concrete was similar to that in previous pours (already we are so jaded!). In the last post, I discussed how the guys had to try to find all of the places the forms might leak before they started pouring. Picture 4 shows them working frantically to block an opening that they had missed.
You may also remember from yesterday’s post that they put wood frames in the forms to block off openings for doors and windows. The windows, however, do not extend to the floor, so it is necessary to get the concrete into the forms below the blocked out area. How do they do that? It turns out not easily and possibly not well — they may have to come back after the forms are off and fill in some voids. Picture 5 shows one approach. Here Javi drilled a large hole in the plywood of a form just below the area where the window into the laundry room was blocked off. He is using the hose from the concrete pump to pump concrete into the space in the wall below the window.
One of the last things I discussed yesterday was the preparation done to fill the gap between the foundation for the slab and the stem wall for the crawl space. Picture 6 shows one of these gaps filled with concrete. They only poured this one, however. They thought that the job today would need a third concrete truck. However, when the second truck finally ran out and they had done everything but the last connection, they decided to call it a day. They will need to buy and mix bags of concrete to fill the second gap later, since it must be done before they can do the walls that go above it.
It is not clear to us whether there will be any work next week. Our contractor and his family are away on a family vacation for a week.