Basement Walls

With the basement walls fully assembled with rebar place, bracing installed and extra strapping installed, concrete was pumped into the 8-inch wall cavity. Concrete can be poured directly from the redi-mix truck into the walls but that is not as easy. We opted to have the pump used. The pump is fed concrete from the truck (in the background, behind the RH side dirt pile) which is pumped throught he crane-like arm to the other end of the dangling hose who is directing it's flow into the wall. The pump's arm is controlled via a remote radio link to an operator who can walk all over the construction site, controlling the arm.

Pete Ginter and John-Paul did the majority of the work, directing the hose and controlling the arm. Pumping took about 3-4 hours and went quite smoothly. Thanks go to them for a very good job done.

One of the minor setbacks encountered was the effects of heavy rain a couple of days before pumping these walls. The far wall against which the ladder is leaning against suffered a soil cave-in. The styrofoam blocks were pressed inwards and we speculated we would have to disassemble the wall in order to correct them. We figured that before would commit to all that work, we would just try to press them back into place. We dug out the caved-in soil and, jacking up the blocks slightly with the wall braces and pushed the blocks into place. This repair was quite effective as the blocks were not too damaged.

In retrospect, given the labour involved in setting up conventional plywood concrete wall forms, as compared to these, we are quite glad we chose the Logix blocks. Cocnrete contractors were not availible to set up these forms and the 3 of us could not have set up plywood forms in a reasonable amount of time. Not only that but the walls are insulated inside and out with 2 1/2 inches of styrofoam which is an energy conservation plus.