Pouring Cement

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          Smooth Taste…Island Pace

 

Pouring Cement

 

          Maybe I should have titled this “Pouring Concrete” but I get confused between the two names and just haven’t used either enough to have it stick in my mind.

          Prep work seems to be the key to getting good strong cement - opps, concrete. Even though it’s called a cement truck, it actually spews out concrete.

We had two projects to pour. A 10 foot by 10 foot square pad that our new silo is going to be placed on, and a 6 foot wide “sidewalk” that would cover the front of the dairy from the goat’s pen to around the corner (about 15 feet in all). Much of the reading I had done on pouring a concrete pad talks about digging down to undisturbed hardpan or bedrock.

Now we did have the base of our dairy building poured and at one point, a friend dug a hole to see where we needed to dig too. At about 5 feet down, he gave up. I don’t think we have bedrock anywhere near the soil surface. With this previous information in mind we just dug out the size and depth we needed. At my farm we have hardly any top soil, maybe 1 inch or so and then sand & gravel & rocks. We nailed together the wood frame, set in place, hammered, & sledged in the wood wedgies (which we cut from old scraps of lumber).

We made a point of making sure the frame part was level – that is where the concrete will go up to, so level is good. Added more soil on the outside of the frame and stomped it down to keep the wood from bowing out. We kept on digging and moving the gravely soil around until the bottom looked somewhat level as well.

          What I’m trying to say that it’s not complicated. If Karen and I can do it, then anyone can. It is hard work; digging gravely soil is heavy going. Making something level can be frustrating and cause a bit of stress between a couple people. When I am tired, I get somewhat snappy. Once the concrete is poured you have to muck it around (we used metal rakes, flipped over) and push it into the corners.

          Luckily, the cement truck driver gave us a hand at “scree-ing”, dragging a wet 2X4 over the surface to make it more level. If we had wanted an even, flat surface, we would have had to rent some metal wands that you rake the surface with to make it even and smooth – that was not necessary with either the silo base or the sidewalk area. The sidewalk was sloped away from the building but that wasn’t too tricky either. I was amazed at how the liquid concrete was happy to stay where you put it.

          The delivery truck was at our place for about 90 minutes and we were basically finished when he left. Still had some cleaning up to do – had to wash all the tools and scrap up any concrete that fell on the ground or onto the wooden forms. It dries very fast. As it was a hot day we hosed water on the new concrete a few times during the rest of the day, keeping it moist is supposed to help it set better. The driver said that for a major mall floor they would build up the edges and flood the floor, keeping it underwater for about a week.

          Did we save any money? Probably not. Did we save time? Absolutely! We used about 5 cubic yards of concrete, which would have taken many, many hours to make, probably a couple days of work at least. I also have a bit more faith in the purchased concrete when compared with what I could make at home.

          Another lesson in construction under my belt (tool belt!).