Huichol page 28 June 7th trip (cont)
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The purpose of this trip was to get the first two
pillars set and poured and the first 1 meter by 6 meter wide part of the slab
poured and trowled out and we accomplished that. The Huichols DID finish
the foundation work although it missed level by a couple inches and that will
cause them to mix more concrete
as we go along to make up the difference. The slab WILL have a slight slope in
both downhill directions to drain properly. And we will need to install a
4" preformated curtain drain at both upper ends of the slab around
it.
Laying the dallas (rebar to you and I) and
setting the castillo inside the cardboard tube. The corner foundations, the
pillars, and the 1 x 6 meter
slab portion connected to them are all poured as one integral pour. We
used 4" 14 gauge steel U channel for forms as we can unbolt the
innermost piece, leave the rest together, and reinstall it 1 meter down
for the next pour.
Right side preps
Mixing the concrete; lots of sand and gravel were
brought up from the
riverbed, the women helped with this too. That was not an easy part of the
chores. Our spring turns out to be four feet short of the heighth of
the
slab. The women packed all the water we used in 5 gallon buckets from
their kitchen area up to where we were mixing concrete. Next
trip I will take a quarter horse pump that can be run off the generator
and fill the water barrel. We will need to add a small storage tank later
on
when we move the women's kitchen up to the end of the slab so the quarter horse
pump can fill the smaller tank from the larger storage tank now in place, and
they can use gravity feed then from the small storage tank.
This tank will be able to be filled from the existing storage tank now in
place
as the spring flywheel. Speaking of which - the warm shower from the 750L
storage tank in the evening is just superb.
Next trip we hope to be filling the foundation
corners and cardboard tubes
for the truss supports
Tomos and Librado filling the right pillar tube -
this was the easy side.
Leaning out from an 8' step ladder on the other side was not easy.
We used a ratchetbinder to tether the 3 guy ropes to the tube that keep
the tube plumb. It took longer than I thought to set the three ropes after
the pour in order to get the tube so it showed proper bubble in both
directions. We used the clear plastic tube filled with water to verify
that
both tubes were set at the same height.
Meanwhile the clock ticks, the sun shone down intensely and the
concrete was drying and demanding attention rapidly. I don't think they
understand the time element or necessary consistency in working with
concrete. I made them remix and add water to several batches that were
too dry to pour out in my opinion. Chaleo, mixing the batches, was always
ahead of us skreeding and troweling it out.
Ber using the skreedboard to rough level the slab
followed up with repetitive trowling to make it smooth. The extreme heat made
the concrete dry rapidly.
It was hard to keep up with. I don't think there was a trip to here that I was
so exhausted as at the end of this pour. Maybe I'm just too fat and getting
too
old for this kind of work.
