9.4.2014

Concrete Eve...always a nerve-wracking day.  Poor Jim never feels like he's ready for concrete and this pour is just so different than anything he's done before.  We have 3 trucks coming - a pumper truck and 2 cement trucks.  Yikes!

Jim worked this morning and got everything pretty much done that he wanted, so we left a little before lunch and took the box truck to Lowe's.  He wanted to get pipe for the gutter downspouts if we decide to have gutters.  But better to have the pipe buried now when everything is open and not use it than to dig everything up if we decide to later on!

Then it was time to backfill...such a crazy big step!  It's really amazing to think that all of the months of work we have spent digging the site and the footers, the concrete, the drains...all of that is going to be buried soon!  But Jim really wanted to get enough done that we wouldn't be walking over planks when we do concrete tomorrow.  So he brought up gravel and to start out, he first shoveled some gravel to make sure that all of the dimple board stayed in place.

After we got a base of gravel down, he was able to use the Bobcat to just dump some scoops in slowly - still being careful not to get any of the dimple board out of place.

Here's all the gravel in the front area!

 

Then it was dirt and rock time.  Jim first needed to build the grade up in this area so he would put scoops of dirt from our dirt pile and I would pick out the bigger rocks.

 

After enough grade was built up, he slowly scooped some dirt toward the hole, filling in the outer edges.

Working our way around the corner...

And even starting to fill in the inside footer area with some big gravel scoop!

Then it was time to lay the drain pipe on the nice bed of gravel.

We just went across the front section with the drain pipe for now so that we could finish backfilling this section.

After the pipe was in, more gravel on top of it.

This front section is all done!

Then Jim brought up gravel and started filling up the inside areas so that we would be able to walk across the openings.

Filling up!

This required some manual labor to get the gravel in the corners.

It was time to clean up and head home for a shower and a bite to eat before we pick up Kyle and Julia tomorrow for the big concrete day!