The Forms are In Place

I have delegated the concrete work to Kevin Anderson, a contractor who has done several projects for me previously, including an addition to the house.  Kevin arrived at about 8:00 this morning to build the forms, along with two helpers.

There was a cubic yard of crushed concrete base material in the back of this truck.  Kevin and his crew covered the bottom of the hole with the base material, to a depth of six inches or so and packed it down with a tamper.  In the foreground below is the rebar that they will use to reinforce the concrete. This will have to be cut, and some of it bent into an L shape.  Then it will be placed on the bottom and inside the walls of the forms.

Cutting the plywood for the forms.  This is 3/4 inch exterior plywood.

The outside walls of the forms in place.

Rebar in place on the bottom.  The rebar is supported by bricks and tied together with stiff wire.

The completed forms.  You can't see much of it in this picture, but there is a lattice of rebar between the inner and outer walls of the forms, similar what you see on the bottom in the picture above.  There are also L shaped pieces of rebar with a vertical part inside the form and a horizontal part in the bottom.  These will help support the concrete walls against lateral pressure from the surrounding dirt.

The outer walls of the form rest on the base material at the bottom of the hole.  The inner walls are suspended from the 2 by 4s across the top, about four inches above the base material, so that the walls and the bottom will be a continuous piece of concrete.

Ready to pour!