inability to calculate volume may be genetic, film at eleven
I scheduled time with Number 6 to pour a cement pad for the kiln I am currently building. Saturday morning quickly became Saturday afternoon as most anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The auto parts places in Bountiful weren't open until 8:00a, the hitch that was purported to come with the truck we'd arranged to borrow didn't, said hitch was part of a display in a store that didn't open until 9:00a, and when we finally made it to AA Ucart, the two yard mixing trailer was already out for the morning.
The evening before, Justin and I set and leveled the forms and installed the rebar. I, however, neglected to remeasure and recalculate the final volume of the pad -- I strongly recommend against this course of action for those of you considering playing with cement at home. The difference between 2 and 2.75 yards is large. I somehow managed to convince myself the pad volume could not possibly have exceeded two yards. My preliminary calculation was 1.8 yards before I laid in a ton of gravel. A phrase often used by one of my drill sergeants regarding assumptions springs readily to mind in hindsight.
My constant readers may recall the pad we poured at Justin's house last easter and the subsequent razzing regarding his expertise in the volume calculation department. While Justin's pad was a miserable three trips for cement, I successfully stooped to a new low with four trips for cement to finish my pad -- two to Ucart for the first 2.5 yards and two to Home Depot. I was positive after recalculating 2.35 yards would be an excessive amount of concrete to finish the job and bought an additional half yard just to be safe. When it became clear the extra half yard was insufficient to do the job, the trips to Home Depot started.
This, of course, only doubled the crow I have to eat.
Stupidity aside, the premixed concrete is hands down the best way to deal with significant amounts of cement for the home owner. The price is a bit less than purchasing the same amount of concrete by the bag from the home improvement megastore, though the savings was almost eliminated by a price reduction this last week on the per bag price of cement. I'm told the premixed cement is a better quality cement. I chatted with Doug at Ucart while he mixed up my second batch. Mixing on the spot allows the supplier to add in small extras like a defloculant to reduce the amount of water needed to make the cement usable -- less water means stronger cement. Not breathing the concrete dust or moving the eighty pound bags of mix multiple times is another significant bonus. The twelve bags of mix allowed me to correct my mistake, but at a cost of an aggravated lower back and full activation of my allergies.
The kiln construction photo album has been updated with a few photos associated with the pour. The three photographs at the cement yard were taken with my Sony Clie NX-80 PDA. I am undecided whether the camera attached to the palm is worth its cost, but it was handy for the capture of these images.