Friday, July 31, 2009

Our concrete takes off

Finally we poured decorative concrete bands yesterday. The forms were all made and approved but the truck came up a little late. Everything seemed to be going pretty smoothly and I really like the color we selected. The group of people, about 5 in total got a rythm going and the bands were oozed into place. They got about 3/4 of it out of the truck when the driver reported that the concrete was "taking off" which means it's hardening up. It was hardening up in the truck!! Unfortunately aobut 1/4 of it set up before we could get it troweled which meant it had to be let dry and then hammered out. They will re-pour this stuff on Monday along with the stamped concrete. Ken didn't have enough finishers..we needed to have at least 5 or 6 and only had three. So we paid for that mistake. It was not a pleasant scene. Everyone was mad and depressed. It did give us time to go around and review where the stamped will be poured and we discovered a few things that were left undone. Drains that should have been fixed. Pool equipment that we don't know about. Arggghh. Also I made a mistake with the fountain space and didn't communicate what I wanted.

Funny that I had an uneasy feeling about the pour in the morning and got up and was out there at 7:00 pacing and anxious.
Guess I had an intuition.

What caused it? Too few finishers who couldn't keep up; Jeff didn't show up; concrete pumped slowly, truck arrived late - 9:45 and the sun was getting too high. Personally I think the color in the crete caused it to set up faster and the concrete company should have allowed for this.

No comments:

Post a Comment