July 21, 2019
A big day! The first concrete was placed today. As is usual nowadays, a concrete pumper was used for efficient placement. At this site, it was absolutely required! The machine is an older Putzmeister 38 meter class. Here’s the modern version of it - the Putzmeister 38Z. The pour was about 35 yards of concrete, but the road to the site has a really steep bit, so the trucks could only come up partially loaded. The larger 10 yard trucks were loaded to 8.5 yards, the smaller 8 yard trucks to 6.5 yards. At about 4,000 pounds per wet yard, that’s still 34,000 pounds for the big ones and 26,000 pounds for the small ones!
Here’s the rig, setup and ready to go to work! The front out-riggers are moved by hydraulic pistons straight out. The rear ones pivot out and again, everything is driven by hydraulics because there isn’t anything on this beast light enough to be moved by hand!
Some last minute form finishing before the concrete trucks arrive. They were delayed by about 90 minutes because the rain started pouring down!
Here’s Bill raising the pumper’s boom up!
That is one big rig!
The 1st concrete truck arrives! This is a 10 yard truck.
The actual pouring. The rig operator has a tough job to do! He’s got to keep the end of the boom close enough to straight over the form so that the foundation crew can keep the delivered concrete in the forms. The foundation crew has to always have enough empty form ready to handle all the concrete that’s already in flight.
The final critical step. Since concrete doesn’t stick to concrete, the footers and the walls have to be joined together another way. That’s done with “L” shaped pieces of rebar. The most experienced member of the foundation crew has to blind feel the middle piece of rebar in the form and hook the short end of the “L” under it!
The end result, footers and connecting rebar are now complete. Next comes the walls!