Thursday, October 3, 2019

How do you eat a Hefalump?

One eighty pound bag at a time . . .

sixty of them . . . . forty eight hundred pounds all told
Had to make three trips as I did not dare carry more than sixteen hundred pounds at a time in my trailer
Loaded on , and loaded off . . . .
Marty brought over his cement mixer and I prep the first five by seven foot section to be poured .
Mix . . . .
Load . . .
Pour . . . fifteen bags
Level . . .
Float . . . .
and float six more times till we have some semblance of smoothness
Next day it looks like a slab. . . though the upper left hand corner came out a bit low to the level line
Next day prep the second five by seven section . . . a good place to dispose of scrap iron and broken hand tools
and dance with Marty's cement mixer again .
Fifteen more bags lifted , mixed , poured , leveled , and floated . . .
A little easier to get right this time with a level front and back
Next day a couple hours of work and I prep the third section
Mower and blower already making use of the new slab
I'm half way through eating the hefalump . . . it hurts just to look at those yellow bags
Sunday we wash rinse and repeat
aaaaand right here it all goes sideways on me when I accidentally mix an extra watery load and dump the whole mixer load in the wheel barrow . . . See if I'd been half as smart as my buddy Glenn Filthie claims I am , I'd have thought it out , and only poured half a mixer load in the barrow at a time so to avoid the spilling bit . But no , duffus maximus in typical fashion here , had to go full retard on this one and I am still paying for it today .
. . . . and in a feeble attempt to not spill said watery load from my crappy low sided , mended wheel barrow , I make an effort to keep it low just barely lifting it and my back gives out on me . . . 
I push through the pain and finish the pour . . . . just barely
. . . . and spend the next three days flat on my back unable to stand or walk
By Thursday afternoon , thanks to the wonders of modern chemistry , I am semi mobile again and spend a couple hours prepping the last section .
Friday I move the last sixteen bags onto the saw horses in a lame attempt at reducing the stress on my back . . . yea right!
and poured the fourth slab
Took the weekend off and rested my back again . Monday I mixed the last bag and a half of cement and poured the threshold under the doors .
Not bad for a hack .
Should keep the mess out of my garage too
And now the Volvo has a dry place to spend the winter hopefully avoiding the flood and ice we had last winter .
As I had to cut the doors short for them to open against the rising grade outside I added a sweep to the door on the inside .
And on the outside too

10 comments:

  1. Beautiful! now you can properly keep your volvo.

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    1. Hopefully it is worth the effort and we wont have a repeat of last year's disaster with the flood and freeze.

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  2. You pour concrete like my dad. Beautiful work M!!!

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    1. Just don't look too closely, its far from perfect, but it will have to do for now.

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  3. I seem to remember that area being paved with ice before.

    Nice work. At least you aren't having to mix it in the wheelbarrow. Still, it's all heavy work with the clock running the whole time.

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    1. Yes, because of the grade of the terrain and a combination of slop/slush, followed by a hard freeze and then two days of rain again followed by a hard freeze last winter, the space as well as my regular garage flooded. Had three inches of ice in there last winter. Hopefully this effort will prevent it from happening again.

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  4. Looks really good-- hope that this does the trick to keep out the ice water!!

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    1. Yea, I hope so to. I've done what I can for now. I'll be real disappointed if after all that effort we have a repeat of last winter.

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  5. I do love a bit of concreting! That said I prefer it once it's done as it's normally such hard work!

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    1. Hey Kev, yea It was something I had to get done before winter set in but it was brutal abuse on the body. These old bones are just not up the the task anymore.

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