F-I-N-A-L-L-Y

No surprises, the septic truck was still there. Now they promise to remove it by the weekend. The concrete folks, Heavy Materials, told me after these constant delays don't call until the truck is moved. It has been a month now. Don't stop the carnival!

I'm not sure how they did it but on returning one afternoon the truck was now sitting along side the road out of the cul de sac. From the frying pan to the fire. As luck would have it, they moved the truck so that it impeded some planned road work to the top of the mountain. The road crew wasted no time with this obstruction. Track hoe meet septic truck! They dragged it and pushed it off the road. Hey, that works for me. Now when the road crew is done the concrete trucks can get by the truck. What's another week or so after all these years! I'm learning to chill.

Oh my god, the pump and concrete trucks finally mate! Very expensive.

Despite his scowl from laying 200' of pipe he's really a nice guy! However, he did screw up later, big time. As I mentioned many times before, the pictures do not do justice to the steepness of this temporary driveway. The grueling part, after already being exhausted, carrying the 10' pieces of very heavy pipe back up to the pump truck when the pour is finished.

In an extreme bit of luck, Thor flew back to St John to crew on a sailboat delivery back to Maine for the summer season. With fingers crossed, I scheduled the pour for the free day that he had. Now Jeff the pumper, barges, the concrete company and the weather had to all cooperate to make it happen.

Psychologically I need Thor, or someone like him, for concrete work. Every pour has its moments of intense labor, very intense labor. The fact that I complicate things with suspended walls etc, making one contiguous pour increases the odds of something going wrong. This pour is ripe for calamity. Should there be a blowout, I have had one, the blow out itself could be the least of your problems. Sure the wall is blown out but that steaming pile of concrete is an even bigger problem. Left alone you have a gigantic mound that has to be later removed with jack hammers. You do not want to do jack hammer work. Thor solves that problem. While I'm good for fifteen minutes of shoveling such a pile, he's good for the whole thing. The only drawback, the other crew I hire via Jeff see this too. When minor things go wrong they just watch Thor/myself, such that I have to yell at them!

After a couple of hours of laying all the pipe and figuring out the sequence of the pour we wait for the first truck to arrive. We wait and wait. Calls are made with tempers rising. Jeff is pissed and I'm having my usual cardiac arrest. You would think after so many pours I would be relaxed about this. I'm not. I want the pours so bad I freak myself out. Here we are, all set up after constant multi year long delays/snafus and the trucks are not here. If it rains, even for ten minutes, they won't be able to make it up and down the driveway, much less the mountain. Even now, writing, it still stresses me out.

Adding to the confusion, we can't understand where the trucks are. The dispatcher on St Thomas says they left and boarded the barge a couple of hours ago. Furthermore, the drivers know exactly where I am. They are the same drivers that did the road work when they pushed the septic truck out of the way. Everyone is telling me to chill, meanwhile, I'm in the beginnings of an anxiety attack. I'm not kidding. On a positive note, I don't pay Jeff's crew until concrete is actually coming out the end of the pipe so their sleeping now doesn't bother me. Who says I have not learned a thing!

Finally, after what seems forever, we make phone contact with the trucks. They have been sitting down in Coral Bay in a cellular dead spot. Don't stop the carnival! Not only that, they are all carrying nine yards so they can't make it up the mountain. Somehow, in switching dispatchers they went down to Coral Bay instead of coming over the mountain via the new road they had just poured a week ago. You can't make this up.

With that, I jump into my truck and race down the mountain to lead them all the way back up Centerline to have them come over the top via the road at Chateau Bordeaux restaurant. This is the way we thought they were coming to begin with. Over an hour wasted with concrete setting in the trucks.
This is the view from the restaurant. Way down at the bottom sat four concrete trucks-trucks that did not have to go there. That line on the left is Centerline snaking down into Coral Bay.

The pour hasn't even started and I'm frazzled. I'm starting to think I'm too old for this sh*t. And here I thought we were pissed off. When the trucks finally got to the site one driver in particular went ballistic. He attempted to blame Jeff for the screw up instead of the dispatcher. The drivers also have their own schedules for delivery, making more than one. Plus, they definitely do not like driving around with nine yards in the truck, especially over the road they just traversed. They think Jeff recommended the nine yards. Now their day is screwed up. It went back and forth until I jumped in and told the driver, making it very f'king clear, that the dispatcher and maybe even himself were to blame. It was in his notes that the pour location was at the end of the new road they had just poured the week before. What, you already forgot where the road was? And the notes state five trucks, not four! Seven yards a truck. He backed his truck into the pumper and work commenced.
As usual I have no pictures of the pour itself, no time. These are the aftermath. The corner of the upper patio.
Splatter central.
No, I did not fall in the concrete.

The stairs down with the septic in the background.

As the pour progressed Jeff thought I had ordered too much concrete. Great, just what I needed to hear, 4 to 5 yards wasted at $260 a yard. Hour after hour the pour went on. Pouring footings, slabs, stairs, patios, walls etc, at the same time makes for a very complicated back and forth, breaking down the pipe and putting it back together again. Jeff said in 22 years he had never done this much before. Never. We had just enough crew. Thor and I did most of the screeding on the walls and steps. Jeff and a helper did his best on the lower slab and later the upper patio while the rest of his crew broke down and assembled the pipe.

I don't know how he does it. It's a Virgo thing. He finishes with a spot or two while I look like I fell in the concrete.

The one foot wide boardwalk that I built, under the red bucket, did its job. When we poured the footings/bottom of the walls the concrete flowed out and did not build up swamping the forms. I had that problem when I poured the lower cistern years before. Digging out the forms took forever. This time the concrete took care of itself. What a relief. To me this is all experimental. I think it through and build it. Will it work? I have no idea. All I know is if it does, the work saved will be worth it.

The mid point of the entire job was the 2" we poured on top of the lower slab. Here we had our only crisis. After reconstituting the pipe and putting another concrete truck in the stirrup of the pumper truck, you have to bleed the pipe so to speak. Putting new extensions on the existing pipe/changing trucks, sometimes pressure builds up, such that you have to be mindful of where the end of the pipe is pointing when the signal is given to start pumping. Well the pressure had built up and Jeff's man was not being mindful. A cannonball of concrete shot out of the pipe and hit Jeff in the side of the head.

It was not pretty. Jeff got laid out. The sound alone of the explosion freaked everyone out. Then in the confusion concrete was going everywhere with the pipe doing it's own thing. Wow. Making matters worse, having sat in the trucks so long, the concrete was already very, very stiff. It was all we could do to screed it. We had to stop the pour while we ran for water to clean out Jeff's ear, eye socket and upper shoulder and head. Jeff was not the same the rest of the day. In a bit of comedy later in the day I drank the water Thor brought from the shack. It was bleach water! Almost as bad as the time I drank windshield wiper fluid. Oh yeah, livin' the life.

While Jeff tried his best to screed the lower slab, the pipe was broken down and the wall going back up the stairs was finished. Basically you pour the footings, some of the wall and steps as you go down letting them set up for about 30 minutes or so. Then on the return they can handle the pressure from the rest of the pour without blowing out as you fill up the walls etc. The walls took care of themselves while Thor and I finished the steps. The concrete was so stiff we could walk on it within 20 minutes. When necessary we pumped and sprayed swamp water from the splash pool/jacuzzi to help.

Finishing the walls off after the footings have set.

Despite the hectic nature of the work you do get breaks from the tension when an empty concrete truck pulls out of the pumper. It can be as much as twenty minutes. You can get a lot of cleaning and screeding done during these breaks. On this job we probably filled 15 five gallon buckets from the waste piles that result from breaking down the pipe. We used it to top off all the walls and fill in the steps.

The upper walls are finally completed. In this picture the larger wall in the foreground sat unfinished for a couple of years when rain interrupted a pour and darkness set in.

So far so good, excepting Jeff's accident. Now we all worked on the patio, trying our best to screed very stiff concrete. Let's put it this way--it is not tile ready as they say. When I drive around and see other work I only can dream about it. I'm going to find out if that self leveling mix works! An expert tiler could probably make short work of it with his thinset. I'm not an expert but I am the tiler.

The scary part. It was these walls where most of the rot and termite damage was located. A professional crew, being paid by some one else of course, would have torn them down and rebuilt them. As the payee, not me! To say they were of some concern goes without saying.

It was only fitting that they were the last to be poured being at the bottom of the driveway. It was hard to watch. The creaking sounds of the nearly three year old forms straining under the pressure was almost too much to bear! I had them start at a certain corner figuring if a wall blew I still might be able to get most of it done.

As you can see they all held. Only the far end of the run below did the wall sort of bend when one of the crew was hanging on it directing the concrete flow. I can hide that when I pour the finished driveway. How it stayed up I have no idea.
Thankfully, Jeff was wrong, the thirty five yards I ordered were spot on. In fact with using the waste piles the only left over was the standard amount remaining in the pumper truck. Eight hours later, during twilight, we were done. I don't think Jeff is ever coming back! For Thor and I it was a 10 hour day. I could barely make it to the shower. Jeff had to park his truck in Cruz Bay and take the passenger ferry. The car barge had already stopped running.

And there you have it--how to spend about 17k. Expensive to some but way less than contracting it out for 35k with multiple pours. Admittedly the work would be better. Larger crews and tile ready slabs, however not 18k better. Money I do not have to begin with.
They are back!

They always announce when they are around. Kind of makes it an even match. The chickens and cats are warned.
Here's what they are after. They work an area for several months before moving on..

This time around there were the parents and a flying chick. While two make a racket, one lies in silent wait and then boom. I have had them come down right over my head in making an attempt. Usually they are not successful. Everyday they make attempts.
That said, they got three adults and a teenager over the course of several days. In the one above they surgically removed all the vitals. Amazing.

This one they ate everything!
I pulled up in the truck when they were attacking her.

Some days are so clear.

Amateur above, professional below.
Previously I mentioned how dry the island was. Here's two photos taken from my truck that show the difference.

Full screen, speakers on...

Part of the crew hanging out.

Thor left a couple of days after the pour. Now the clean up and the removal of all the forms. The process reveals how well the pour went. Stiff concrete can look pretty ugly when the forms come off. Cold seams aside, honeycombs and voids are not unusual. To my complete surprise all the walls turned out great as evidenced in the pic above. The labor at this point is just grunt work. Take down 40 or so sheets of plywood and store them for the future. 15 or more sheets were at the end of the road, rotted and termite eaten. The rest I stored downstairs using the new steps of course. What a luxury. Patios and steps. The years I waited for this. Slipping and sliding in the mud are in the rear view mirror. I spent two days pinching myself, literally sighing, almost hyperventilating, realizing that this pour had actually, FINALLY taken place. Yes there are a couple more to come but they are not complicated, 100' pipe vs 200' and not essential to securing the perimeter from mud slides etc, as this and all the previous ones were. I can finally sleep at night.

Rather than carry the marginal ply down to storage I built another 16' extension to the ramp. I should have done this a couple of years ago. It's dry now but in the mud it makes a huge difference. That's some leftover 14 gauge galvanized steel flashing that I used to wrap the red iron. It later ended up causing an unforeseen problem on the porch.

There's always some forms that just don't want to come off.

After I dug out the old mud slide and removed the whalers to free up the ply, the remaining hillside caved in. Crazy, I know. But with treated ply at almost $50 a sheet, dig I must but not twice! When I was about to give up and get the skill saw to cut it in half I chanced upon my "come along". It worked. You do scratch your head when you realize you spent half the day getting one sheet free.
I found this guy drowning in the splash pool. Nothing I did worked. So I drained the swamp and put a couple of 2x4's in making a ramp. Dumb as these guys are he figured it out.
Now, back to tiling, grouting and skim coating the interior walls.