85 Sacks

Today was the day appointed for placing the concrete for the shed foundation, and it dawned chilly but clear, with all signs looking good for having a floor by nightfall.

In the mid-morning, while we were fussing around the garden, the concrete arrived. The pallets each had 42 80-lb sacks on them, giving us three tons of concrete to move from the driveway to the back yard before we could work.

Moving the sacks took all the rest of the morning. Here's the concrete work yard we'd made when we broke for lunch:

With one break to deal with a nasty fight in the laundromat parking lot (police had to be called), we worked from one until well after dark, Noel mixing the concrete while I dumped barrowloads of it in the formwork and spread it around, occasionally stopping to vibrate it into the cracks. (Vibrating works really well, but it spits little bits of concrete everywhere, and before I wised up and put on safety goggles, I got a chunk of wet concrete in my eye, which is REALLY REALLY REALLY painful and made me cranky the rest of the day.)

The mixer was the real star of the day; we'd be totally dead if we'd had to hand mix the stuff, but as it was, the time it took Noel to mix a bag was the amount of time it took me to place it in the formwork and smooth it out.

Here's an animated GIF of our day, just to reduce the number of images on this page:

The horrid moment was when we realized we really needed just one more sack of concrete. Fortunately, the local hardware store was still open, so Noel ran over and got two sacks (just in case). And we were able to finish the job.

This was completely exhausting. Tomorrow we're going to rest.

Technorati Tags: foundation, concrete, shed

posted by ayse on 12/02/06