Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Cement Trucks are coming!

Today we are getting the footers poured for our house. I thought the kids would remember more about the building process if they wrote down what they saw, so I gave each kiddo a book to draw (or write) what they saw today. 
They had fun, although Nikki got bored quickly and started drawing whatever she wanted on several pages.

Tommy also followed Kyle and Stephen around, doing his very best to help them prepare the footers for cement.  Stephen would trim the roots, and Tommy would gather them up and toss them out, as well as gather up any rocks that had fallen down in the trimming process. 

He was very proud of his job. 

The french drain and electrical drain (for our geothermal) got laid next. 

The girls got bored and went back inside. Tommy got bored too, so he started climbing dirt piles and sliding down. 

He tried to entice me to join him, but I wasn't brave enough. While he was having fun playing on the dirt, the Building Inspector came to inspect the footers. She said we needed to have the electrical inspector tell us how to install the ground rod and he would probably need a picture of it, but that the footers looked good, so she passed the first inspection. Yay! I called up the inspector, and he told Clint how he wanted the ground rod installed. 


Good thing we called, because the inspector wanted the long end along the rebar instead of the short end, so we got it fixed and looking all right. 

Finally, the first cement truck pulled up. Tommy was thrilled!
He was jumping up and down with excitement. Unfortunately, there was a little extra excitement as the truck pulled up - one of the workers had stopped for a potty break when the cement truck rolled past and bumped the port-a-john. The bump must have been pretty hard because it knocked his shoulder out of joint for a little bit, but he was able to pop it back in place.  Thankfully, after all that drama, nothing else happened and he's ok. 

We called the girls out to watch the cement truck start pouring the footer. 
I love how my girls love each other!

They started pouring along the upper garage side of the house. 


The cement here is a thicker consistency so it doesn't spread as far against the forms. 


It was neat being close enough to see the cement come out, but boy, those trucks are scary!
Clint hopped in his front end loader, and they added cement to his bucket to fill in some of the areas that were more difficult for the cement truck to reach. 



Once all the steps had been filled with the thicker cement, Clint had the driver thin out the cement and they were ready to pour the real footers.

They still filled up the bucket for one end of the footer, but it went surprisingly fast.  


Buddy had fun hanging out and watching all the action too. 

In about a half hours time, they had poured our master closet footer and part of the front of the house. 

 


We had to leave to finish painting our old house, so we didn't get to finish watching them pouring the cement.  It was a lot of fun seeing them start it though. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. 

Pin It!

No comments:

Post a Comment