The Breakroom > The Water Cooler

Building a Bridge

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vtsteam:
He has a very delicate touch with that excavator and could place rock exactly where he wanted it -- sprinkling it in a line like it was sand in his hand hand.

vtsteam:
We did not like the block that was delivered. Long story on that, and Dave had already placed a few rows of the first abutment. We decided to take it back out and replace it with 4' x 4' x 2' concrete blocks which we would cast ourselves. These will weigh 4800 lbs, vs the pre-cast block weighing 2600 lbs.

Two helpers and I cut and drilled two by lumber, cut sheets of ply for bottoms, leveled locations and drove stakes in order to assemble  6 custom  forms yesterday.  They were poured this morning.

We will need to unmould them and reassemble them 8 times to complete all the block for the bridge. Once a day. Dave is on vacation until August, and we were hoping to have all the block done by then. But it looks like next week will rain most days. I hope not!

awemawson:
A major engineering project Steve!

Are you having the concrete delivered or doing it yourself? That's a lot to mix and place

vtsteam:
Heh heh, Andrew no, I'm not mixing it myself. 4800 lbs times 50 blocks equals 240,000 lbs of concrete. Pretty close to a quarter million. Or in you guys flavor about 110 tonnes. I can wield a shovel pretty good, and I do have a small mixer but truly Andrew you flatter me!

Modesty aside, there's an 18 year old kid working with me -- tall strong kid -- football player material, but he came in uhhhhh, my guess.....hung over--- he normally tends to use a shovel as an arm and chin rest anyway.

I looked up after I'd taken apart and moved single handed 4 of the 6 forms, and he'd disappeared into his car today, obviously texting. I called him back and asked whatsa matter? He said he didn't feel good, had a headache, he wanted to go home. I said okay the concrete truck will be here in forty minutes, call your boss on that cell phone and tell him to send somebody else down here fast. Then I stomped back to the forms we were re-building double-time.

Strange thing, he came back in a minute or so and started doing a small amount of work -- high speed for him. I said "Is he sending somebody?" He said no, he was feeling a little better and might as well stick it out. I said okay, up to you.

I'd started at 6:30 AM -- he got to the site a half hour late at 8:30. I'll be 70 next year. I can do three times the work that kid can do.

Seventy is the new twenty, apparently!  :lol:

awemawson:
I know that the older generation has always bad mouthed the younger generation since time immemorial but it does seem we've managed to raise a particularly work shy lot recently.

I can remember as a teenager being absolutely desperate not to be late for my various holiday jobs, obsessively so, and always being there waiting to be let in!

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