Final Building Foundation Pour

We completed the fourth and final building foundation pour yesterday, and the crew worked quickly today to disassemble the forms on the interior walls and columns, so that the excavation contractor can start importing fill material tomorrow morning. We used around 25 cubic meters of concrete, but it was a time  consuming pour because it was all in small, constrained spaces as you can see from the photos below.

(forms and steel reinforcement are ready)

(crew standing on the forms waiting for the cement pump hose to get within reach) 

(guiding the pump truck hose along the wall forms, while crew on the ground gets forms wet)

(pouring the walls for the elevator shaft and the stairwell)

The building is starting to take shape as the exterior wall location gets defined and the elevator / stairwell area becomes more clear as well. After tomorrow, the fill material will be imported, compacted and rolled, and brought to within 10 centimeters of the future slab on grade elevation. Then we will excavate for the Ground Beams that tie the columns together, lay the steel in the trenches, place the wire mesh / grid on top of the compacted fill, and pour the slab and the Ground Beams at the same time.

(pouring the column necks to within 10 cm of the slab on grade) 

(concrete and water oozing from the forms immediately after the pour)

While the excavation contractor is doing his thing over the next 4 days, the crew will be working on the reinforced concrete retaining wall that will separate the site from the future street along the north (front) elevation. The total height of the wall will be 5.5 meters (~18 feet) with a footing that's 2.6 meters (~8.5 feet) wide. Here's a picture of the crew clearing the area for the foundation steel, while two others start setting the forms to hold in the concrete from the next pour for the retaining wall foundation. More on this to come in the next couple of posts.

(cleaning and setting forms for retaining wall footing)