The forms were completed yesterday and we got approval from the City on those forms, so we can pour concrete today!!!

The driveway concrete also has rebar reinforcement, but unlike the garage floor, this rebar can be set in the middle of the concrete thickness by placing it on concrete block spacers.  This adjustment is being made now, just before the concrete truck arrives.

The rebar reinforcement sitting on its block...

And the concrete truck arrives

throwing the crew into a mad frenzy to change out of their nice leather boots and into their rubber wadders so they can walk in the wet concrete without worry.

As I said before, all the forms were finished last night.  Here is a view of some of the forms

To pour the concrete for the driveway and curb, they once again use the extended slide instead of renting a pump. The extended slide reaches easily this time to the edge of the curb.

The first mass of concrete has been poured into the first section of curb.

After a little more concrete has been poured, some of the guys move on with the slide while others stay behind to do the first hand finish of the concrete surface.  The lowest (altitude-wise) section of the curb and skirt have been troweled to their rough finish.

Moving on to the main body of the driveway, the heirarchy of this concrete pour is starting to become apparent.  For every concrete pour, we had a heirarchy of the crew; the man holding the hose and deciding where the concrete was to be delivered was #1, followed by hose holders, the man working the vibrator, the man holding the vibrator power supply, and lastly, the trowelers.  Today's heirarchy has to be a bit different as we do not have the pump, thus the hose, or the vibrator.  Today, we have Gene, in the pink shirt, who is #1 on the heirarchy for today, on the concrete slide directing where the concrete falls (not unlike the #1 guy with the end of the hose from the pump in previous pours.  Here we also see two guys with shovels.  They are actually on level 5 of the heirarchy today.

As they move across the driveway, two guys use a 2X4 to produce the rough finish of the driveway surface (these two are #4s in the heirarchy) while the third guy removes any excess concrete from the immediate area using a shovel (again, #5 in the heirarchy).

The final pitch of the driveway and the skirts are all done by hand using a bit of 2X4 following the string guides that were created during the form building.  Here a #4 shapes the skirt of the right hand side of the driveway.

A trench drain runs along the width of the garage about 8 inches from the garage floor.  It is here that we see one of the missing levels of the heirarchy, #3, the troweler.  To finish the narrow section between the trench drain and the garage floor, one guy (a #5) shovels concrete into the area between the drain and the garage and a second man (a #3 troweler) produces the rough finish of this surface with a trowel.

Once a substantial portion of the driveway is complete, they use the board on a long extension piece (yes, technical terms) to create the smooth final finish.  The operator of this tool is #2 on the heirarchy of the day.

In order to ensure that the geometry of the driveway is done to the regulations set up by the inspector from the city, the concrete crew had to place height guides (created from wooden stakes) along the driveway that remained in place through the rough finish step.  Before the final smoothing step is completed, these height guides had to be removed.  The removal process consists of one crew member reaching across the wet concrete to pull out the stake while another man holds onto the back of his pants so the first guy does not end up in the wet concrete.  It was at this step that Peter got involved!   I am not sure where Peter falls in the concrete crew heirarchy, but I think holding onto the back of someone else's pants cannot be that high up.

The driveway is complete except for the final smoothing.

Looking out at the driveway from the garage.

More smoothing and finishing.  The guy in the garage is removing any concrete that inadvertently ended up in the trench drain.

The curb also has its final finish.

The last step in creating the driveway is to create the channels in the concrete that will help the concrete to preferentially crack within these channels.

The skirts at the two edges of the driveway were shaped by hand, as we saw earlier.  The amazing thing is that they are identical on both sides!

The driveway is finished.   Now the only thing to do is wait until it dries so we can test whether we can actually get our cars into the garage using this driveway!