Time for another trip down to Eatwell Farm and the future Formworks home of Nigel Walker and his family.  I took the train, arriving early Friday morning.  Lorraine picked me up at the station in Davis, not to far from the farm.  After some of their famous fried eggs and tortillas for breakfast, we waited for the concrete crew and equipment to arrive….and waited….and waited.  Apparently the shotcrete truck got held up at the inspection station with some faulty lights.  They were not allowed to proceed until it was all fixed. When the equipment finally arrived around II am,  everybody got really busy.  Nigel chose to have the concrete mixed on site.   This involved piles of sand, gravel, and a supply truck carrying powdered portland cement.  The benefit to this is a constant supply of fresh concrete which gives you more time to “work” with it.  We might try to do this too but I’m not sure if we have the space for all the required equipment.

This skid loader was kept busy all day filling the hoppers of the portable processing truck which mixed the ingredients into fresh cement that was then fed to the concrete pump.

Add a bit of compressed air and Voila!

It was dark by time they got to the last section of the house.  The work area was lit up with headlights and one of those big portable jobsite lights.

Unfortunately I had to head back that night on the train before they were finished. but it was great to be there to see the shot-crete process.  I even did some of the concrete trowling so I could get a sense for what we will be doing on our house.  Also,  Dale from Formworks Building Inc. flew out from Colorado to be on hand for the big event.  It was great meeting him in person and getting more pointers on how to proceed with our project.  I can’t wait to get back to work.

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