Garage slab poured

Overall this process worked the same as it did for the footings and foundation: pumper truck (again from Ralph's) is on site, cement trucks (from Cemex this time) show up with cement, cement is pumped into the forms (mostly the foundation walls, in this case), then the crew works and levels the concrete, etc. Piece of cake (well, if you've done it before). Brian and his crew from Concrete Reality made this job look real easy.

Here comes the first of the mud:

The 2x4 in the above picture is resting on the foundation on the right, and on the left it's resting on a nail sticking out of a temporary stake, with the nail set at the right height to get the required drop to that point from the rear foundation wall. The garage slab was specified to drop 3" from the rear to the front wall, to encourage rain\water to flow out of the garage. In the above picture, you can also see a chalk line they struck against the foundation edge as a guide.

The crew worked roughly one stall at a time; here they're doing a rough screed to get most of the concrete to the right level and slope:

Hey this guy is leaving footprints in my slab!

Not really; actually he's "jitterbugging" the surface of the concrete; the jitterbug tool he's holding is basically a rectangular grate with handles, that he shakes into the surface layer; this depresses any large aggregate deeper into the slab, and leaves the concrete "cream" on top for better levelling later on.

The jitterbugged surface then gets an initial float:

It took about 14-15 yards of concrete for my job, which meant two trucks (each truck has a ~10 yard capacity). Here the last stall is being filled from the second truck:

(You can see a better view of the jitterbug tool to the left.)

Also, the crew was commenting on the fact that the second truck's load was "hotter" than the first, so it actually cured somewhat faster.

Paul arranged for a little bit of extra concrete so we could pour this little slab near the crawlspace access hole:

I plan to put a cot down there...it will be a fine living space for my brother Bill when he comes visiting... :)

After the initial float job was done on the garage slab, the guys took a short breather to let the concrete set up a bit. We got a short rain shower....

...which gave me a bit of a scare, thinking my new garage slab would be ruined. The crew took it with aplomb though. The rain didn't last long but the water left on the slab meant everyone had to be more patient before continuing on with the final float\smoothing jobs.

I couldn't stick around for all of the job, unfortunately. Here's the guys in the middle of the second float though:

Looking good!

Next up: a delivery of actual wood so the framing can start! We should see some wood attached to the foundation before this week is over.