Hi All. The next week is 50% chance of storms, daily, with highs in high 80s and lows around 68-70. It will keep the concrete from curing to quickly so should be good except we need to start taking down bracing etc on Saturday after my dad's funeral and the various family get togethers. My brother will be up from Arizona and said he can help.
My day job gave me 3 days "bereavement" time off, though I will use some of it to actually do a little day job work so I can comp-time it next week when I need it. But it made it easy to be away from the desk yesterday with the concrete pour.
This morning I slept in a bit. Was tired from all that has been happening this week. In addition, my son went this morning to get his wisdom teeth out (I still have 3 of 4 of mine -- perhaps why I am so "wise"!!). Wife called and said they are done but son is still kind of in twilight zone from the sedation.
Yesterday we did the pour, as I mentioned, after all the delays. I had sent the job super that is helping me the concrete details last week and I also forwarded them to the owner of the company that is actually hired to do the pour (they also dug the hole last year and did the footings). There was a quote from the ICF installation manual that for 8" and 10" walls aggregate up to 19mm (3/4" more or less) was OK, but because I had been told by a couple really experienced people to only use pea gravel in the concrete due to all the narrow steel crevices at I had explicitly called out "pea gravel" after quoting from the instruction manual (I quoted from that as it had a ton more important bits than just the gravel). Despite me explicitly calling out that we needed "pea gravel" the first load showed up with the larger 3/4" aggregate. I quickly called and the company owner was able to switch but the first 2-3 trucks were the larger gravel before they were able to get pea gravel mix.
The crew also showed up without a concrete vibrator. I called the super and they called the company owner who called me and said they were going to rent one. He showed up with one borrowed from a friend who does ICF homes -- it attaches to the top of the rebar and heavily vibrates the whole bar. That worked for about 2/3 or 3/4 of the day before it went kaputt. They also had a whip one they had rented which they used to finish. I am not sure they vibrated as much as they should have but they did go around a few times. Depending on what area.
As I posted earlier they had set up forms for a retaining wall for the rear basement walk-out stairs. They decided to try and use the larger aggregate concrete in that and started to fill it up but since it was tied to the house and abutted the house walls, which were empty of concrete at this point, it started to push against the wall and dislodged the one corner about 1.5 or two inches in. They also had a blowout where the wall had been pushed and the form no longer touched the wall. They quickly tried to stem the blowout and stopped putting more in. They blocked the blowout space and we figured out what/why was happening. If we had =thought about it a moment before we tried to fill the retaining wall without the house wall at the same time we could have avoided that. Overall it is not a huge deal as it is all below grade and we needed to put a false wall for the bathroom in anyway right whee the wall is dislodged a bit.
The way you are supposed to do ICF is go all around your forms --- the whole house -- and do about 3'. That gives the concrete time to set before you get around and start the second layer. And it reduces the liquid pressures on the wall. But because of this retaining wall they wanted to just fill that house wall it was attached to. I was not too happy about it but it worked in the end. No blowouts or anything in that wall.
Then they started to do the 3' but not around the whole house. They did a wall and around part of the garage (they did the long garage and a rear wall) and then they went and did another layer and then another. They kind of did each section completely before going to the next, but they did 3' at a time. But not enough time to set first. The vibrating crew did get around a couple times.
Anyway in the end it worked out and there was only one other blowout, and it was minor and was my fault. On the first layer, on a mixed size corner I had to constrcut from two different corner pieces, I had to insert a 2" wide piece of foam. I meant to add a bracing board over it to keep it in when poured but forgot to add it last Fall (this was on the very first row). So it popped out when they started to put the concrete in. One of the crew was there when it happened so he grabbed a 2x4 and blocked it and called me over. I had cut some 16" x 18" or so "blowout" boards from plywood and quickly placed one over the whole (the crew guy had pushed the foam back in the whole as well) and screwed it into place so it was minor.
Saturday I'll start to take the bracing down etc as long as it is not raining too hard. Don't know if the son will be up to helping, having just gotten home 15 min ago from the oral surgeon, but the brother can help he said...
I did get a call Tuesday from the guy I had rented my previous bracing from, before I bought my own, and he wanted to know if I'd be interested in renting mine out for a month before I need it again. So I will hopefully be able to do that.
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