The School 20 foundation pour was a success. Under the leadership of Paul, our ace schools project director and a great guy to boot, we cranked out a full, smooth foundation in one day. Actually, it was under one day! We had wrapped mixing by 3:15 p.m., about 7 hours after we started mixing an hour into our workday.
The plan of attack (and a lovely Australian).
Team Beluga, mixing cement by hand.
A view of (most of) the scene.
The last foundation pour on which I worked was for School 13, one of Chris’ schools, in July. Then, it took us 2 1/2 days, using two automatic mixers, to produce the same sized school.
Paul’s planning deserves a lot of credit for our success. Using a large automatic mixer and two hand mixing teams — all named after whales, because as Paul explained, “Whales are great communicators” — teams first filled the 3ft deep trenches that serve as the footprint of the school, and then moved on to the slab.
I worked on the sand team, preparing buckets for Team Humpback (the big mixer). For most of the day, we were cranking out wheelbarrows full of fresh concrete every minute. It was a challenging, physically demanding, dusty day. Paul described it as the “greatest day of his life — ever” at tonight’s meeting.