Shop Slab Pour

It’s 7:20 on Saturday morning. We seem to have escaped the worst of the wind. It’s windy, but it has been worse. The power didn’t go out until around 4 a.m. and was only out for a couple of hours. We got out of bed when the fire department was paged out for a tree down across the road nearby. One of the other firemen handled it (I asked the husband if that guy sleeps in his turnouts because he is always so quick to get to calls), so the husband fired up the generator and went out to survey the damage. A tree was down across the easement between our two properties with another one about to come down. I got the coffee going and went out to hold the battery lantern for him while he cut it up. (I can’t do much, but I can do something.) That tree, unfortunately, hit one of the apple trees on the rental house property as it came down and took out the top of it. We’ll have to trim that later today.

There are snow flurries. It is 31 degrees. It feels pretty raw out there. When the sun comes up, I’ll walk over to see how the garden fared.

But now, pictures of the shop slab pour. The first concrete truck was scheduled to show up at 8:30 a.m. The line pump was there around 8:00 a.m. to get hoses situated:

When the concrete truck arrived, it backed up to the line pump truck:

Knife River is the name of the concrete supplier the husband uses.

The line pump truck pumped the wet concrete into the shop and our guys started spreading it around. The batch plant had added accelerant to help it cure more quickly in the cold:

The trucks are timed to arrive so that there is always one waiting:

The husband gets a lot of free clothing from his suppliers. His favorite hoodie is his Knife River orange one. I can always find him in a crowd. And this is why my house will never look like something out of a home and garden magazine. Concrete is messy:

When one truck is empty, it leaves and the new one takes its place. We got four trucks of concrete, each holding ten yards:

While our employees were placing the rest of the concrete, the husband started smoothing it out with the bull float:

The shop is designed so that he can drive vehicles and equipment through it. Here, I am standing in the main door opening looking through to the door that opens out onto the easement lane. (I look at this and all I can think is, “What a great place for a party,” which is not what the husband thinks when he looks at this picture.)

When he was done with the bull float, he switched to the power screed:

And he finished with the power trowel:

The last of our employees left at 5 p.m. and the husband worked out there for a few more hours. The slab looks nice, though, and he’s happy with it. The garage doors are on order and should arrive in a week or two.

I whipped up an apron yesterday in between popping out to take pictures. That’ll be in the next post.