11 Yards

My forms will be put to the test on Thursday morning when they'll get filled with 11 yards of concrete. Jeff came this morning to improve access around the foundation. The cement truck should be able to shoot concrete to just about every side. There shouldn't be too much manual moving of the stuff, but I'll have four people with hoes and shovels to do whatever it takes. I'll be glad when it's over without incident. I'm just a little worried that there's some weak point I've overlooked. I've witnessed concrete blowouts; it's not pretty. I once had the responsibility of bracing the forms on a wall 7' high and 25' long. We were pouring a wall against a stone foundation for an old triple decker renovation in Woonsocket, RI. A careless carpenter had built the forms, and in one small spot on the bottom of one of the forms the plywood wasn't properly fastened to the stud. The absolute worst place for a weak spot on a set of forms is on the bottom where much of the force of the concrete is concentrated. The forms got about half full of concrete when the sharp sound of splintering wood stopped everything. Concrete came pouring out of the broken form. We spent a couple hours wheelbarrowing concrete out of the basement, another couple hours repairing and re-bracing the forms, and the cement truck came again at the very end of a very long day.