Pouring the Walls

Last week the foundations  and ground level of the fist two units were poured at the Parkdale site.  The forms were more than 10 feet tall so a lot of care was taken to reinforce and brace the walls before placing the concrete. The greatest fear with this operation is a blow out due to the weight of the wet concrete.  A 90 degree pipe was put on the pumper hose to slow the rate of  concrete being delivered, so that there would not be a sudden load which might break a weak point in the formwork.  The walls were poured to the 5 foot mark and allowed to set up before topping up the remainder. Accelerator in the concrete mix allowed the first lift to stiffen in just an hour, so that the remainder would not put undue pressure on the formwork.

Big Day on a Small Site

A surveyor will verify the grades tomorrow, but it seems the breaking-out of rock is complete.  John McRae has been using a large shovel to load the fractured limestone into trucks for two days to empty nearly the whole site to a depth of 1.5 -1.8 m.

The form materials were being delivered ready for forming of the foundation walls directly on the rock. Large packages of the styrofoam modules that will be assembled as insulated concrete forms were lowered into the hole with a special boom truck.  Even on a small project like this as much as possible is done by machine. The next step is is assembly of the forms which will likely take about a week, depending on the weather.