Footings were down but we needed a basement which meant we needed concrete walls. That means concrete forms. I called a few places and found the forms, but I couldn't take off work so I would have to go get them the next day on my lunch break. Each concrete form weighs 120 pounds, there are 150 flat panels, and 4 corners for a total weight of 13,950 pounds. How in the world do I get those to the build site? Had to split the load up into two trips. Take half after work drive an hour home, unload, drive an hour back, pick the other half up, drive home and unload. The problem with that is, I would lose 4 hours in just drive time and the concrete would be there in less than 24 hours. I would have to stay up all night setting the forms, and then pour that morning. How in the world would we do that? Remember the last blog ended with hope and inspiration. That's how. The drive to get it done, to get my family something to live in.
On Friday (5/17) I drove my truck and trailer to the rental yard and picked up half the forms drove home, unloaded, drove back, loaded again, and drove home. I called a long time friend of mine (Troy) and he came down to help. He got to the site about 10 that evening. Brad and Derek helped me and we had about half the forms up. But we had skipped a form in the corner by mistake and we didn't have time to change it we just worked around it. By 3am Brad was out of gas and went to the shop for some sleep. At about 4am Derek ran out of gas. By 6am Troy and I had finished setting the remaining forms. We had 2 corners to put in, but I had to tie the re bar in the walls first. By 7am that was finished and we had the other panels in. At 8am we had braced the walls and straightened the forms. We were now ready for concrete, or so we thought. We went in to take a nap for as long as we could. At 9am the trucks (yes more than one, 16 yards of concrete total) showed up. The first truck started its pour at 9:30 on the north corner. We began to hear some popping on the forms. Nothing big but it made me un-easy. I noticed a lot of water coming out between two forms just before the north corner. We had left the key locks out of the bottom, and it would eventually blow out those forms. I jumped in the trench and pushed the forms back in with my legs, but couldn't reach the key locks. Derek jumped in behind me, and got a key started but not fully locked. It was holding for now though, and there's nothing you can do when there is 8 tons of concrete standing straight up in a wall and gravity wants to tear it all down. One of the drivers was an experienced wall form guy and he said to just wait, pour slow give it 10 minutes to setup some, and pour again. We followed his advice and eventually the forms started to fill. One form however started to bust open. We all stopped and waited. Every few seconds I would hear a weld break. Any minute now I expected a gush of concrete out of the forms, and all my foundation money would be up in smoke, not to mention I have to dig the forms out on only 1 hour of sleep.
We walked around to what would be the inside of the basement, and checked the forms. The older driver asked if we had any wailers. I said 'I have no idea. What the hell is a wailer?' He described one, I said yeah we have 10 or 12 of them. We grabbed up these wailers and placed them on the forms, then drove 2x4's inside them to brace the walls. It worked and we started pouring again.
The one form on the south side though, just wouldn't stop popping. We slowed the pour down again on the south side, and braced the form more, just in case. Finally at about 2pm both trucks were empty. I had a new found respect for liquids that stand up and we had our basement walls up! Unfortunately there was no end in sight for work. I had sat on the top of the walls shoveling concrete for over an hour. Brad was on the other end doing the same. We were both worn out, and just because it can happen, the well had quit and we had no water. Savannah had been trying to get some water from the faucet in the shop but it just wouldn't work. Finally she came out with one glass of water, and to this day it's probably the best glass of water I have ever had.
I had gotten a pretty good chemical burn from the concrete on the backs of my legs, and desperately needed to wash it off, but without water, there wasn't much I could do. I finally got the shower to work and rinsed off. I told brad to do the same. I had to go back and top off the walls and install the J bolts to bolt the house too. I crawled across the forms with a hand float smoothing the top of the wall. I worked pretty slowly and it was plenty painful with no knee pads. I managed to get concrete embedded in my knees and an even worse chemical burn on my shins, but when that was done, We all took a much needed nap.
Chemical burns from concrete. This lasted almost 4 weeks after they were burned. And yes if you look close it's all green a full of puss and concrete. Good times.
As much as I didn't want to, we had to take the next week off. Working 8 hours a day and another 5-6 hours after work was starting to take it's toll on me. After those walls were up I felt like I could sleep for weeks.
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