...and we have a slab.

Wednesday 10th November dawned a little overcast and pretty cold.  I was down at the block early to welcome the concrete pump truck, a marvellous piece of vehicular machinery.  It parked itself like a giant blue and white queen bee in the middle of the driveway awaiting the arrival of the drones (concrete mixer trucks) that were soon to be backing up regularly to deposit their offerings.

The concreting crew when they arrived were far less poetic and much more down-to-earth - or just downright earthy.  That was at 9.30 and it was all over for Levels 1 and 2 by 12.00, except for the 'finishing off' by 2 out of the 6 or 7 guys who turned up to start with.  Finishing off happens as the concrete starts to harden off and they go over it again and again with hand trowels and their giant 'whirly-bird' to get the surface as smooth and polished as possible.

"Righto boys, put out ya fags, lets get on with the #@*! job..."

Despite the colourful language, tats, cigarette butts in the concrete and liberal doses of phlegm, they were pretty impressive as a team - each person knew what they were doing and did it; no mean feat when you're wearing gumboots walking through 4 inches of sloppy grey concrete with all that reinforcing hidden underneath.  Once the mixers started rolling in there was no time wasted and everything ran very efficiently.

My little extra job was to put 'threaded rod' (basically a giant open-ended bolt) into the concrete every so often sticking up about 100mm.  These were used later as a bolt to hold down the frame.  As a complete slab-pour newbie, I didn't realise how quickly the concrete would go hard so nearly made a disaster out of the only thing I really had to be there for... All good in the end though (and it's great to have dynabolts as extras!)