The First Pour

A lot has transpired in the past couple of weeks. Technically, a LOT of steel rebar has been placed, leading up to the Big Day, July 18, which was the First Pour of concrete. We poured between 80 and 90 cubic yards of concrete, a huge amount for a house this size, and it all went very smoothly, even though it was a nightmare getting those 9 trucks up the tiny little private road from Norfolk. I credit Mark Boyle (the project super), Edgar (the Adorno super), and the great Adorno crew for having everything so well prepared and dialed in that nothing was delayed or went wrong. It was a really spectacular day of accomplishment from 9am to 4pm.

In the week before, Mark Komater and his guys installed conduit and j-boxes, particularly in concrete retaining walls and stem walls:



We also had Lunt Marymor out to install some low-level plumbing:






And of course the MOST important part, the sample of the integral color for the finished floor. I chose this color weeks ago because I liked it, and once it was poured, the amazing thing was how close it is to the color of the earth beneath the house. It's an exact match; I could make up a whole story about how I worked to find just the right color combination to reproduce that beautiful mustard-colored earth, but the truth is, I picked it off a color chart because I liked it. The soil beneath the house, according to the soils engineer, Bill Langbehn, is called "cretaceous undivided," known in the geology world fondly as "CRUD." This particular area (Area 6) is part of the ancient Orinda formation, which extends from above St Helena to south of Santa Clara, described in Nielsen's book, "Relative Slope Stability and Land-use Planning in the San Francisco Bay Region." I love the fact that building this house is acquainting me slowly and in great depth, with all the details about the house and the earth on which it is being built. And here are the samples being formed:



And the finished product next to the ground it'll cover:



A sample of the color in the footing for the north retaining wall:



Here's a great panoramic that Mark took the morning of the pour:



We had nine trucks come in sequence (very well managed, too, so that none of them had to sit turning) up the very narrow curved private road:



Busy day!