Cast-In-Place Walls

This week the crew finished constructing the board form for both sides of the cast-in-place walls, added all the bracing to support the walls during the pour and placed the anchor bolts on the top that will be cast into the concrete during the pour - and passed three inspections - and poured!  Phew...

            Here is a view of one of the walls with both sides of formwork on before they placed the anchor bolts on top.

view down one of the tall walls to the footing

Here is a view from the North before and after the concrete was poured....you can see some of the concrete starting to ooze out between the boards.  We wanted 'board-formed' concrete walls.  There are a lot of different ways to make the formwork for a cast-in-place wall and they all result in a different looking wall.  The boards will leave an imprint on the concrete and because there is a small gap in-between each board some concrete spills out to give the wall a little texture.

after pour

West wall after pour...

View from above...

Today they have to let the concrete set - tomorrow they will start taking off the formwork so that it doesn't stick to the concrete.  By Monday the concrete will be strong enough so that they can start back filling the trenches with the large pile of bedrock that was excavated for the footings.  They have to put the bedrock back in small increments and tamp it down with a machine that vibrates and compacts it.  By code the final compaction needs to be 95% or more meaning that it is very dense and will add support to the vertical stem walls.  The rest of the soil that was considered fill will need to be exported from the site and thrown away.