Another Big Pour, DONE!

Laying the steel took longer than I thought.  Now that the forms were mostly finished,  we spent days hauling up rebar,  piece by piece, to the top of the forms.  By Friday, March 14 I was finally ready for my structural inspection. That went well,  and I spent some of Saturday and all of Monday working on the forming details.  On Monday afternoon I called for the city inspector to come by on Tuesday.  We spent all of Tuesday detailing the forms.  I had already set up the concrete and pumper for Wednesday,  so I worked until VERY late Tuesday getting ready!  At midnight I went home,  not because I was ready,  but I wanted to have a little sleep before the big day!

The  Big Pour Day!

 Since I still was not completely ready for concrete,  I decided to start at 6:00 am and do what I could without making noise.  When I got there the finishers were already waiting! At 6:30, the pumper arrived and started setting up. From then on it was non-stop action!  I didn't even have time to break out the camera until almost noon!

The first truck arrived at 7:00 and we started pumping into the walls of the cellar. The 2nd through 4th trucks came about 40 minutes apart,  and we all worked really hard to keep the concrete pumping.  I put a hold on the next truck until after lunch so we could catch up!  I was STILL fixing parts of the form!

After lunch we finished the concrete pumping,  and started finishing.  

The finishers started with the floor above the cellar,  then moved up to the round tower. Finally, they tried to finish the master bedroom,  but it was too wet to finish so we waited.

By now it was past 6:00pm.  I went out and bought some dinner for the guys while they monitored the concrete.  As soon as it was set enough,  they started finishing. By this time it was dark and I had some flood lights set up.  By 9:00pm, they were done! 

Here are some scenes from this crazy day!

The next day I was able to see the finished slabs in the daylight!  They turned out very nicely!

The day after the Pour,  we spent most of our time moving all of the ICFs that were stored on the top level of the excavation.

We stacked as many full bags as we could over the cellar.  

 

The rest of the pieces were taken out of their bags and neatly stacked up on the Master Suite floor.

  Once again,  the light weight of the ICFs made this easy and fun!  One of the guys stood at the bottom and tossed each piece up to me about 20' away.  They just floated up!   In fact, sometimes a gust of wind would catch them and they would go right past me!

By the end of Thursday we had the upper footing area cleared out and ready to start cutting.

Many months ago,  Mike the excavator had done a pretty accurate job of cutting the trench for this footing. All we will have to do is level it a bit more,  and cut the key.  That will be next week's focus!

Now that the cellar and livingroom walls are filled,  we will also set the gravel and french drains for backfilling.

Next,  we backfill the walls and prepare to pour the rest of the kitchen slab!

Another 3 levels, almost ready!

Another long gap between posts!   Sorry! 

I have been busy on Buckingham, helped out by a long period of great warm weather!

After finishing the Livingroom and Cellar walls and the Master Bedroom floor, I decided it would be best to do the Master Bedroom Tower floor at the same time as the rest of the suite.

This involved building a complex form, supported on 12' tall posts. This form also included my first curved ICF wall section. I learned a few tricks, and will be able to build the rest of my curved walls much more efficiently! The door shown in the picture below is actually the coat closet that will be in the 3' thick wall of the tower.

This view is from inside the foyer looking through the forest of shoring to the main entry door on the right, with the coat closet to the left.

The forming of the beams surrounding the tower floor was difficult.  Even though they were less than 7 feet long, the fact that they were 13 feet in the air made them pretty hard to construct.  I frequently found myself at the top of a ladder leaning on a post and raising  sections of the form by myself!  

This view of the Master Bedroom level is taken from the round tower looking down to the Master Sittingroom and bathroom area.

The floor above the cellar is the front portion of the Kitchen/Greatroom.  The rest of the Kitchen floor will be poured when I have moved the ICFs being stored on the hill!

One portion of the cellar ceiling supports a structural post that carries a load all the way to the roof.  Since the post does not line up with a wall (my crazy design!),  a triangular section of the ceiling is a solid beam to support the post.

Since the slab will be poured in 2 phases,  I have set rebar into the top of each joist that will tie the 2 slabs together.

This panoramic view from the master bedroom level shows how close we are getting to the level of the back yard!  Just a few steps up from this level will be the kids bedroom level,  then a few more steps up to the back door that leads to the yard and roof deck. 

Just a few more days of forming and prepping,  and there will be another big pour day!