Pouring the Walls

HI!

The forms are done and the walls are ready for concrete. Steve the Builder brought in a concrete pump ..... interesting piece of equipment. Looks like a Praying Mantis. It's parked in the driveway and the boom can reach all the way back the rear of the house. There's a flexible hose on the end of the boom where the concrete eventually comes out. A concrete truck backs up to a trough at the rear of the concrete pumper, dumps his mix into the hopper, and the pump moves the concrete through the piping / boom to the point where someone guides the concrete into the forms.

There's an Operator with the concrete pump, and he's outside the cab near where the concrete goes into the forms. Around his waist is a remote control unit like one might see in a model airplane park. This guy is good ..... he doesn't even bother to look at his control box; he watches the guy guiding the end of the pipe and the concrete going into the form, adjusting the boom as the guy on the forms walks.

Here's the guy who works the hose. The last three feet or so of the piping system is flexible and he guides the end near the form and the concrete pours in ..... As the form fills up, he walks along, standing one foot on each of the forms. That's perfectly OK and fairly easy to do, except the forms are not the same height all the way around. If he falls off of this form, he's OK. But, if he falls off the ones at the back of the home, he's in trouble. The forms there are close to 14 feet high!

The other jobs that go along with pouring the concrete include "The Settler." He's the guy on the ground, near the bottom of the form, who hits the side of the forms about 200 times a minute to settle the concrete - making sure there aren't any gaps or air pockets. Gotta get all the corners sharp!

In the other hand, the guy has a small bladed shovel that he uses to smooth out the top of the concrete.


I watched the process for two cement truck loads and they filled about 40 feet of the lower set of forms; when I left, there were three more cement trucks waiting to take their turn! I'm guessing ...... maybe 20 trucks? Who knows. Maybe I'll have to ask how many yards when I pay the bill for this part of the job, LOL!