The day of pouring the slab on the senior residence was quite exciting. It started at 3 a.m. because the concrete plant had a full schedule. Weather was perfect for pouring concrete, cool and somewhat humid. Things got hotter once the sun came up.
Trucks woke me up at 4:00 a.m. After deciding I was not going back to sleep, I got up and went to the site. I found the concrete pouring was well underway. By 5:00 half the concrete had been placed. This job will take an estimated 360 yards.
At 6:00 color was showing in the sky over the lake. Sunrise at 6:30.
Once the concrete is hard enough to walk on, a machine is used to level out the minor variations of slab height. A boom pump truck is used on jobs like this because of slab size and site conditions. This truck can place concrete up to 130′ away from the pump at 3-4 yards per minute.
This is about the 35th truck at the pump. Notice the man in the safety vest with the remote controls for the boom.
It’s 5 hours after the first concrete truck. The slab by this time is quite hard. There are no breaks for the men. Anything that needs to be done to the slab has to happen now or it’ll be too late. They have begun to apply the curing compound on the far end of the slab.
The finished product. Red lines on the left are where they started laying out saw cuts to control future cracks in the slab. The boy is cleaning up some recessed bolt threads where steel columns will go.
Now that there is a foundation, y’all will have to check back more often. Things will progress more rapidly than they have in the past few months. tgh
