Yesterday was the concrete pour day at Ardmore for our bridge foundation. We met bright and early on site at 7:30am ready to set our posts. We had our 4 posts that needed concrete poured as well as two landing points for each end of the bridge. We would not have been able to done it without the help of the City. Who provided the concrete, water, mixer and several helping hands (thank you for taking time to help and teach us how to properly pour concrete.)
The process for pouring concrete is really quite simple it is just messy and concrete is not a light material to haul over a creek. We broke up into a few teams for the process to go by quick, and started on the site across the creek.
I was in charge of dumping the concrete into the wheel barrel and helping the city fill the mixer with cement and water. John, William, and Micah worked the wheel barrels and filled the holes with our concrete mixture.
The vast majority of the class was spreading concrete once poured or trying to prevent the concrete from spilling over at our piers. These points where the most difficult to pour because the holes filled with about a foot of water over night. In order to counter this we poured in a mixture that was much drier than the others so the water could further be absorbed by the concrete. However, the concrete also pushed a lot of the excess water our of our holes.
Shout out to Staci. Thank you Staci for putting your life on the line for our concrete pour. Don’t worry shortly after this she went and got hosed down and cleaned up.
The final process when pouring concrete is to smooth it out. This requires you to start by scrapping off the excess concrete. Then following that by smoothing it down. Once that was done we squared the edges with tool that makes the portion of concrete that meet the framework nice and crisp and clean.
We all enjoyed learning about how to pour concrete. Everyone was excited and very eager to learn something new. We look forward to installing the bridge next semester