Going from Bare Earth to a Concrete Slab

Once we had a dusty, unused field.  Now we have a nice, flat, cleared area (while preserving as much of the surrounding flora as possible).  We've gone from dirt to prepared forms complete with plumbing and rebar.  It's all inspected and ready to go.  And the concrete will be poured from 5:30 tomorrow morning, Texas time.  That'll be a start of 8:30 PM Monday night, our time, so hopefully, I'll get to hear a bit about the pouring late evening.  Several times during the last few weeks as the various activities seen in these pictures took place, I wound up talking to people about 2 AM to sort out questions and problems.  One of the real drama of doing a project like this from 10,000 miles is that I can't be there, can't interact with the crew, real time and can't be part of the immediate decision-making process.  I miss that but am very thankful that we have a group of concerned contractors, workers, friends and family members all helping out where they can.

The following is a sequence of pictures:

The time taken to go from the new road to this picture was 18 days and there was a lot of hard work done in the meantime, so you'll get a feeling for the amount of work that it takes to clear a site, get it very level and then have precisely (surveyed) level, square and true forms erected.  Since we're erecting a standard steel building on the concrete slab, the forms must be exactly right.  From the point of the picture above until the day of pouring the concrete is another two weeks and during that time the following activities took place:

The inspection team came out yesterday and signed off on this phase.   We're getting three inspections.  The first is of the slab and plumbing just prior to pouring the concrete.  The second will be after all the framing is done, rough electrical and plumbing done (but no sheet rock installed) and the final will be just prior to occupancy.  Given our plan to do some of the work ourselves while we're in Texas, it'll be awhile before we have all the framing done.

It is exciting though to be to the point of getting the ground phase done.  There's been a lot more work than I envisioned getting this far.  We've been very fortunate (as I said earlier) to have a very good contractor for the road, leveling and concrete.  He's been very communicative (good with email, smart phone and other modern communication techniques) and has taken the plumber under his wing to make sure that portion was properly scheduled and executed without delaying the overall schedule.

Tonight, we'll have a functional concrete slab, temporary power to the site and water.  And while I think it's taken longer than I expected, it's really only taken a month from grading the road to this point.  We're on schedule!