Of Skylight Pours….Is This How the Egyptians Did It?

Nine. Nine Rings were gifted to the race of men.

Who above all else desire power.

I really wish I had more time to spend talking about the Nine. I’m going to go on a rant one day about them and how Tolkien’s work is so relevant even today. I’ll give you a  warning though. It’s only fair to the non Middle Earther’s out there. Hmmm. Let’s move on Jim before everyone goes to some other blog or whatever.

….and welcome back friends of Middle Earth! Glad to see you all still hanging around. I hope everyone’s summer months were enjoyable . At least that’s where we are in the Northern hemishpere. Labor Day weekend is upon us and the begining of football season. Terence had a scrimmage this weekend. Not bad. There’s some potential out there. I’m looking forward to the games.

So we finally got to our little old skylight pour. It wasn’t that little though. It was three and a half yards of concrete. So my big worry was how are we going to do this pour if we don’t have the right amount of people. I was able to get Bulldog Concrete to deliver Saturday at one oclock but he said he could really only stay for about an hour. That’s a problem. It’s a problem because we’re doing this pour the old fashion way. You know, like the Egyptians. A bucket, a rope, and a guy dumping the bucket into the skylight form. Repeat about a thousand times. So it was by design I didn’t tell anyone how we were going to do it. I knew there weren’t going to be many takers. I was thinking that if Bulldog started complaining about how long it was taking I might have to make it two pours.

So I figured we would need 6 slaves, I mean people. Sorry about that.  I had my King Tut hat on for a minute there. Jude and Zach were there and I was hoping Terence would make it but as of Friday night we had no other takers…but the Lord works in mysterious ways does he not. Late Friday Terence’ friend Paul said he would help. He’s also on the football team. The scrimmage starts at 10 AM. It’s going to be really close. The scrimmage started early though and finished early. It was over by 11 AM . I couldn’t believe it…..and after it was over Jude and Terence had recruited two more people for the pour, Sean and Gian Luca.

So the plan was to have Bulldog pour the concrete into a box and then have Paul and Gian Luca shovel it into a 5 gallon buckets. From there they would hook it to a rope that was manned by Jude and Zack. They would pull the buckets half full of concrete up and place it on the roof. From there Terence and Sean would walk it over to one of the skylights and dump it into the forms where I would trowel it out. Repeat about 10,000 times and then we’re done. It’s fun!

It actually went way better than I thought we were finished in about an hour and a half. I think that might be a new Guiness Book of World Records record. I’m gonna have to look into that. Here are a couple of pictures from the day.

Pre pour skylight with rebar installed.
Pre pour skylight with rebar installed.

If you look close you can see the thermal break I put in around the 2×6. This creates the thermal break we need between the framing and the concrete.

Gian Luca and Paul filling the buckets.
Gian Luca and Paul filling the buckets.

It’s official: Gian Luca doesn’t want to be a construction worker. He’s going to head to college. It’s nice to know that I’ve somehow helped in somebody’s decision making process. Gian Luca didn’t have trouble sleeping Saturday night. It was a tough days work

Zach and Jude pulling up the buckets.
Zach and Jude pulling up the buckets.

So once the buckets were pulled up and put to the side the game was how close could you drop a bucket down from the roof without hitting Paul or Gian Luca. I was kind of engrossed in what I was doing so I didn’t realize they were doing this. Good thing I had them wear the hard hats.

Sean dumping a bucket into the skylight.
Sean dumping a bucket into the skylight.
Waiting for the ground crew.
Waiting for the ground crew.
The finished product.
The finished product.

So eventually we are going to secure our skylights to this little old concrete roof we just poured. You’ll see.

Here’s the ever expanding workforce. I couldn’t have done it without them. Thanks guys!

Zach, Gian Luca, Jude, Sean, Terence, and Paul.
Zach, Gian Luca, Jude, Sean, Terence, and Paul.

There’s never a dull moment when pouring concrete.

Enjoy your Labor Day!

Jim

….and a special thanks to my sons Jude, Terence, and Ethan for helping me out all this summer….. I love you. Dad.

 

 

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