Carport.....Yaaaaa

The final truck has come and gone and although lunch is ready and waiting for them, they have to get to a certin point before they can take a break, cement waits for no one and once it has set, it is there forever. Oh and by the way, it took 4 loads!


The third truck has unloaded and we are lookin good!!

The second truck arrives and it looks like it will take us to the half-way point. I calculated 4 loads, 40 cubic yards. We will see.

This is a good shot of all that steel that we will never see again but will be so important as time goes on.
The chute man guides the cement to where it needs to be placed and the other two rake like heck to get the cement in place before it starts to set, it all depends on the temperature and humidity as to how long it will take, somewhere around 3-4 hours.

The cement truck arrives with the first load and the hussle begins!!!

Carport ongoing....

Due to weather constrants and Thanksgiving it took longer than we had planned to do the pour, but this happens and the only thing to do is wait it out. But we are ready ! Larry is digging out the final hole where a center pole will help to support the building. Rocks are placed to keep the rebar off of the plastic and the bottom where it would be exposed and could weaken the foundation. Because this is a carport the thickness of the slab will be 6"in the car parking side and 4" in the storage side.

Carport continued.....

The crew worked yesterday and today building the forms to withstand the force of the wet cement . As we have learned in our past projects about how cement can get away from you if you don't have extremly strong forms and enough people to get the cement in place and smooth before it dries.
Above you can see the rebar in place about one foot apart going in both directions. We used 1/2 inch rebar, also known as #4 rebar.

After the fill dirt is in place and the footings are dug (footings are the ditches that go below the frost line around the whole building and where ever there will be a wall that needs extra support) ,6 mil plastic is placed as a vapor barrier so the cement does not dry out too fast. Next the rebar is cut and tied together to give the foundation its strength. In the picture above you can see one of the rebar structures ready to be placed in the footing.

Here we brought in our electical inside the building so we would not have to see the box on the outside. This line was dug a few years ago and we just extended it about 10 ft to come up from under the footing.

Carport Foundation

The forming of a foundation starts with finding the corners that are square to each other and the top of the floor that is level from one end to the other. This is done most easily with a Laser Level, but it helps to use someone that knows how to use this instrument. We decided to hire the crew that had formed the shop and bath house 2 years ago. It will take them about 4 days to complete the foundation.
After they found the corner points and what was level, they established the top edge with 2 X 12 inch lumber and reinforced this board with 2X 4 for support. Because we wanted to start on solid ground, we needed 48 cu yards of heavy sand fill dirt for our 22 foot X 36 foot carport.