Build Update: done. Pouring.

May 3, 2023

No cutesy or pun-ny title here: it’s to the point, primarily because we can’t believe it.

We’ve been very quiet for the last several weeks. Since our first pour, really, when things didn’t go as we’d hoped. Since then, things continued to stack against us, and we wanted to take a break from always sharing bad news.

Our first matter of business was the road—digging out sloppy parts, laying down rock and road mix, smoothing it out. Then we let the weather and sun dry it all out.

Second was reinforcing the walls, specifically the corners…we didn’t want to risk a blowout.

Third was to sand the subfloor seams, which expanded with the winter moisture (aka an uneven floor). Our generator broke down and we had to take it to a small engine shop. We weren’t able to sand all of the floor seams due to that.

We rescheduled the pour several times due to numerous issues we won’t delve into. The main takeaway: pour day was today.

My dad and Keith are both out of town today; so, my mom watched Luke and I was able to get out to the build site for a couple of hours. I have absolutely zero construction skills, but I was able to help with the very easy tasks (“Hey, can you hand me that? Can you go grab me that drill?”) like a champ.

The road was dry and the cement trucks had no issue with it. The entire process was efficient and smooth. I’ll be honest: it was a little anticlimactic, which is ideal given our luck lately.

The cement truck dumps the cement into the pump truck, which is then operated by the pump truck guy via remote control. He stands by with the designated concrete hose guy and moves the pump along as needed. Everyone else is scraping cement into forms so it doesn’t dry as overflow, checking to make sure cement is flowing under the window bucks, setting truss brackets, etc.

We had our ICF subcontractor, trusses/framing subcontractor and concrete subcontractor out to help with the pour.