Weekend Six

I'm going to go ahead and warn you now:  this post has LOTS of pictures.  There's a very good reason for that, though...we poured basement walls.  This is a BIG job, so Dustin enlisted the help of a few more friends from work.  Thank goodness for them!

So, since we have a lot of pics to get through, I'll try to keep the commentary shorter.  Well, I said TRY.  Anywho...we started the day early and prepared for the concrete trucks.

And then they came, one after another, after another!  

And so it began....in the picture below, they guys went ahead and got started on pouring around the garage.  Normally, you would wait for the pump truck first, but our poor pump truck driver got rear-ended and it took him a little longer to get there.  Of course, these guys weren't going to waste any time, so they improvised!

Why yes, those are boys climbing all over the super tall walls. :-o  And, you may also notice Johnnie running up the concrete chute.  That man is a squirrel!

Once the pump truck arrived, things moved a little faster and the boys had to sit and watch.

If you've never seen a pump truck in action, it is something to see!  

If you don't know what a pump truck does, it basically takes the concrete from the concrete truck, runs it through a big long hose and allows you to move it easily all over the site pouring concrete exactly where you need it.  It would be impossible to do that with the concrete truck alone.

The boys did get to jump in and help by tapping the walls trying to beat the air out of them fill the voids.

Doesn't that look like a lot of fun?  Another reason you want the concrete coming out of the hose instead of the chute from the concrete truck is because the space between the forms is fairly narrow and you need the hose in order to manipulate the concrete.

I decided to snap a shot of how the whole process works because I thought it was pretty interesting since I'd never seen it before.  As you can see, the concrete truck pours the concrete from the chute into the pump truck.  Then, the pump truck pumps it into the big hose.

The boys kept busy with their jobs all morning...I think it had more to do with the fun of climbing around than anything else! ;-)

Once the concrete filled the walls, they had to smooth it out.

Day Two

Sunday we were back to just Dustin and Johnnie.  They spent the day taking down the forms and now we have walls!

Jaden was the only kiddo there today, but that didn't stop him from climbing around as much as he could get away with.

We have a lot of clean up left to do, so the work will continue throughout the week.