The concrete pour did not start as early as the others; the concrete truck arrived about 8:30 today. Prior to the arrival of the truck though, the guys covered the walls with plastic to protect them from splatter
While we waited for the concrete truck to arrive, I spoke with the super about the concrete pour today. He told me that for such a small area that it is not worth renting a pump and the guys would be laying the concrete with wheelbarrows. He said that it would only take them about 45 minutes to pour the entire garage even though they are doing it all one wheelbarrow at a time. The photograph below is what I pictured for the "wheelbarrow pouring". The concrete truck sitting in the road and the guys transporting one wheelbarrow-full of concrete at a time from the road to the garage.
That wasn't quite what happened though. They have an extension piece, or actually many that they hook together, to make the concrete slide longer out the back of the truck.
Although, it didn't quite reach all the way to the garage....
so the guy moved the truck so that the slide did reach into the garage.
Now they can deliver the concrete down the slide and right into a wheelbarrow in the garage.
The first wheelbarrow full of concrete is wheeled into the server room
and dumped.
The second load of concrete is transferred from the truck to the wheelbarrow..
A few loads later, some of the guys transition to leveling the concrete and creating the correct height for the garage floor.
Since the guys are wheeling the whellbarrows around the garage with concrete, they couldn't raise the rebar reinforcement before the concrete was poured onto the floor (this was a concern of Peter's). Instead, they had to physically pull the rebar up through the wet concrete before they finished the surface. I thought I had gotten a photograph of this but it didn't turn out. Anyway, the rebar is not on the floor as it was when they started, but is set somewhere in the middle of the thickness of the concrete. The exact position varies I bet since they are doing it all by hand, but at least it is somewhere in the middle and not on the floor!
The super was right; it took them barely any time to pour the entire garage.
Although, it did go very fast as they got away from the walls because they just dumped the concrete straight from the truck, bypassing the wheelbarrow step completely!
The guys better start moving if they don't want their boots left in the set concrete! No standing around discussing....
A few guys finish the last section of wall. After this, they left one guy to smooth out the concrete as he backed out of the garage.
Then it was time for the smoothing board on a long extension handle (that, I am sure, is the technical term for this tool).
Another view of this smoothing technique.
The edges were all done with hand tools.
After this step is finished, they will go in to do the final finish and insert channels in the middle of the garage floor. These channels act as nucleation sites for cracks so if the floor does crack (in an earthquake or something), it will preferentially crack in these channels. Or so they tell us.