Now that the footings were done, the next step was to pour cement in them. Jeannie, Daphne, Evan, and Miranda (a friend from New York) all helped, and the job was done in less than an hour!
We obtained our cement from Rock Solid Concrete Products from Westlock. They have a great system where the cement is mixed from its components on-site. This has the advantage that it doesn’t start to cure when it leaves the cement truck; the curing starts as the concrete is placed. In addition, since it is mixed as needed, you don’t have to order extra to ensure you’ll have enough. You pay for exactly what you end up using.
Though not strictly necessary for a pour like this, we opted to use a cement pump truck instead of hauling it by wheelbarrow (particularly, the telescope pier pad and pilings required a lot of cement that would have had to have been manually hauled by wheelbarrow). For this, we used A&B Concrete Pumping from Acheson, and it transformed what would have been a very heavy job involving manual labour to a relatively easy and straightforward one.
When it was all done, we had to sign all our names in the telescope pier base, of course! It’s just unfortunate that it will all eventually be buried 6 feet below the building floor. Someday, when archaeologists excavate the site hundreds of years from now, they will at least know who was involved in building it and when!
