Cement and Ce-MORE-ment

Last night Jim got the supplies and returns for all seven circuits of tubing into elbow sleeves and secured in place while I removed tarps. Then he connected them all together so we could pressurize them to test for leaks. Since we don't yet have power on site I made five trips back and forth to the garage to charge two air compressors.

This morning Jim borrowed his brother Gary's generator, and that made filling the tubing much easier. Both sets held at 100 psi for an hour, so we dropped them to 40 psi for the concrete pour.

Randy came this morning to pour the slab. He decided there wasn't enough slope in the garage to pour that today, so he cancelled some of the cement and will come back Friday to re-grade and pour the garage. I drove the kids over to watch for a few minutes. There were two trucks there at the time, and Sawyer called them "cement and ce-more-ment."

One note on the foam staples: they work fine for laying out the tubing, but when cement drops in a large pile and oozes outward, it drags the tubing with it and rips the staples right out of the foam. After we discovered this problem in the first few seconds, they spread an inch of cement over all the tubing first to help hold it in place, then filled in the rest afterward. I hope the tubing all remained close to the right place so we don't end up with too many cold spots.

I forgot to mention to Randy that we needed to keep dirt off the streets, and before he was done the Farmington City Dirt Nazi showed up and staked in a violation notice at the curb. I went back tonight and spent a few hours trying to clean the mud off the street. Randy brought his Bobcat for me to use, which helped get the largest stuff off. Lydia came over to help too. I heard a story about muddy footprints on the road getting a project completely shut down, so I guess I should be grateful it's just a warning.

The warning also mentioned that we needed to have a lined concrete washout area on the lot, rather than washing out in the garage where we'll be pouring more cement in two days. Nobody I've talked to has ever heard of such a requirement, and nothing was said of this requirement during the permit process. Apparently it's a very new requirement.