The First Pour

The First Pour

For the last couple of days everyone has been preparing for the foundation footings to be poured. On the last day that Mr. Sylvester’s crew was on site they excavated all the trenches. Then on Tuesday afternoon Mark Sethares, Concrete Placement arrived and started putting the 2-x12 boards along the trenches.  Unexpectedly the next morning Mr. Sylvester’s foreman was summoned back with a bobcat to increase the size of the excavated space needed for the platform footings to accommodate the Lally columns. That done the footing form placement could be completed.

However, at the end of the day we got an emergency directive from the structural engineer in New Hampshire that an 8 foot shear wall needed to be added for support for the kitchen addition. That came out of left field!  The cement mixer and pumper truck were already ordered for 9 o’clock the next morning.  So something had to be done in a hurry.  A quick call was placed to Paul, our unflappable general contractor who handles every problem while multitasking with his cell phone. He rounded up the troops for a 7:00 am call on site with shovels and pick axes to dig an 8-foot trench through a 5-foot wall of dirt. With four men, including Chris, the task only took an hour. Chris lost more sleep than that the night before just thinking about the challenge. Even so the cement truck was backed off to10:00 am for insurance.

When I arrived at the cottage, the work was all done. The new forms were in place and the pumper had arrived from off Cape. Everyone was standing around gabbing waiting for the cement truck. This gave me time to check out this piece of machinery that would get the job done. It looked so monstrous that I imagined it could reach the tallest buildings in Chicago with no sweat. Now for the facts, the pumper truck weighs 30 tons and is equipped with a telescoping crane that will extend over the cottage to reach the forms in the inaccessible rear corner of the building site. The partner in this job is the concrete truck that does a front pour straight into the pumper’s intake funnel and the aggregate mixture flows through the arm and out the end of the hose. 

 Right on time the cement truck showed up and all was ready to go. The pumper operator, Jeff walked around the site using a remote radio control unit to maneuver the telescoping arm. He also controlled the placement and flow of the concrete when Mark called for it.  And he smiled when he told me he also controlled the horn that signals the operator of the cement mixer to stop pouring.  As each form was filled Mark Sethares and his assistant Frank wrestled the cement pouring tube into place. Then they tamped the cement to disperse the air bubbles and slid rebar across it for reinforcement. Next they dragged T shaped pieces of wood across the top to smooth the surface of the footing. Finally gooseneck rebar pieces were inserted to provide vertical support for the foundation walls. The cement will cure 50 % in 24 hours and after that 50% each day for the next 28 days. But we were told that it will be hard enough to walk on tomorrow and the work will continue. 

We decided not to leave impressions of our hands or feet in the wet cement with the date, knowing that it would be buried under the walls that will be poured next week.  But we will do something in some unexpected place that will give us a laugh whenever we think of it.

Frank and Mark Set Rebar