Double Yahoo!

Today we poured the foundation. The sub with the pump came at 7:30am, followed by the sub with the concrete truck, followed by the sub who did the concrete finishing. Very specialized work!

Because we didn't have direct access for the concrete truck, we had to pump it from the street into the house via a big hose.

Then they moved the hose around and filled the forms.

I liked our neighbor's analogy to squeezing toothpaste out of a tube.

All of the communication between the pumper and the concrete truck guy was via hand signals since they were 40 ft apart with a cacaphony of equipment noises in between. The pumper would signal with his hands "How many yards left?" or "Add 2 gallons of water" or "Stop!".

The first concrete truck had 8 yards (One cubic yard of concrete is 3' X 3' X 3' in volume, or 27 cubic feet) and took about 1 1/2 hrs to pump into place. Then we had a short break of about 30 minutes while we waited for the second truck with 4.5 yards to finish the pour.

Bob caught a potentially big gaffe. In one corner, which is the front porch, the subfloor is pitched slightly to make sure water drains away from the house.

However, Bob noticed the concrete finisher was also pitching a part of the kitchen subfloor. No, no, no, no, no! There are many details in homebuilding that can be overlooked ("I wish the laundry plumbing wall was 3" to the left") or swept under the rug ("let's hide the portruding vent stack behind the cabinet toekick"), but having non-level floors in the house ain't one of them.

In the end, everything got worked out including lowering the level of the concrete for the front porch. (I didn't tell Ruben that I wanted to have a brick porch; I just assumed it was obvious since the walkway leading up to it is brick. Ruben thought the finished porch would be the concrete.) Lesson #1: Never assume, especially if your sub is blind and can't see the brick!

Anyhoo, the kids had some fun; they got to leave their handprint!