Concrete Day

Timeline: Friday 11 October, 07h00: I couldn’t sleep. My back was telling me to get up, so I made coffee. The scalding liquid is getting the caffeine into my system, needed to get going with the day and I can feel the benefit straight away as my brain opens to the idea of conscious thought and hands control back to the day shift.

07h20 and I’m processing the tasks to be accomplished before lunch, as between 13h30 and 14h00, our biggest yet and certainly the heaviest truck is paying us a visit. So big and butch it is, that it will park outside of the gates in the road and deliver its slippery load via a big bore pump and 50 metres of hose. Yes, it’s Concrete Day!

Kevin and Daniel arrive and start clearing the ground floor of plasterboard stock, the staff canteen and the rubbish heap from the upstairs work and a bonfire is soon reducing the rubbish in the rear garden. An hour is sufficient for clearance and someone remarks how big the room is again. Well, we aim to entertain many people, so just as well!

Service pipes and cables are arranged and secured to be concreted in optimum positions and I lay a cable duct to the kitchen island unit and anchor it down with concrete paving stones.

Preparation complete, the men go back to plastering upstairs and I to acid cleaning the bathroom floor in Le Grenier and at 12h40, the little concrete pump truck turns and sets up outside the barn, rapidly told to get back on the road outside, as I’m not risking 15 tonnes of big concrete truck slowly trundling over the cellars!

With all hands to the pump, repositioning is rapidly executed and the pipeline snakes along the courtyard and through the kitchen doors and as I go and help Paul the electrician with a tall radiator in Le Grenier, the big boy truck rocks up and miraculously doesn’t block the road, which would have caused great consternation with the large tractor/tailor units trundling about the village with the fruit of the grape harvest, still in full swing. 

 

 

The rest of the operation went as smooth as silk and the plant delivered a steady viscous stream of fibre reinforced self levelling concrete directly to where it was needed. It hardly required any assistance to steer it into place and just 20 minute after the start button was pressed on the remote control channel zapper, our carefully measured 15cm of slab was in place and with a perfectly smooth top surface, ready to receive damp proof membrane, insulation, screed, heating element and tile in due course.

All that remained to do was a clean-up, pay the big truck man and since we couldn't walk on the liquid slab to get upstairs until Monday, adjourn to the village bar for some well earned refreshment!

A bientôt,

LC

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