(If you are new to this blog, please start at the beginning and follow the "next" link at the bottom of each post.)
One unfortunate aspect of blog postings is that you loose the timestamp in the metadata of a photograph. When you see a sequence of similar pictures, I'm taking them to record the time intervals.
The Forest site wasn't busy so I moved on to the M&M site.
2:04:46 Jackpot, I caught them pumping concrete into the wall form for the bottom part of the second half along Maple Avenue. Note the cement truck has the engine on the rear and the spout in the front over the cab. I'll get better pictures later when it leaves.
3:05:10 An overview shot for context. The boom has four segments. The rubber hose on the end is permanently attached. They have added a pipe at the end so that they can easily start to the pour at the bottom of the form.
2:05:32 To the left of the worker pushing the pipe around are two workers handling the vibrator that is shoved into the concrete every couple feet or so.
2:06:08 A vertical shot because I get bored quickly.
2:06:22 They are near the end of the trucks load.
2:07:32 A video showing the high speed they turn the drum at to get the last little bits of concrete out of the truck.
2:09:48 The truck has come up the dirt ramp and backed up to where they have a "wet" dumpster. It is next to their regular dumpster, but it has a tarp lining it to keep the water and soggy concrete inside.
2:11:54 And now we have at least a half-dozen workers waiting for the next truck to arrive.
2:12:24 There a couple of workers that are building a form for a ledge on top of the already poured wall along Maple. Seeing a skid steer running around a construction shot is common. The little excavator is not. The basement is supposed to have three levels of parking. The excavator is helping to install drain pipes.
2:17:08 The truck has been cleaned and it is now backing out onto Main street so that it can leave. A worker has used a stop sign to stop the traffic on Main while the concrete truck does this maneuver.
I understand that this truck design can hold 11 yards of concrete.
2:17:26 I take quite a few pictures when I have a chance to be this "up close and personal" with a piece of equipment I've never seen before when I had a camera.
2:19:38 Another reason for taking pictures while waiting while I'm bored is that later I'll think of a question and, if I've taken enough pictures, I'll find one that answers the question.
2:31:04 And digital is just so cheap compared to film.
2:21:22 We are still waiting for the next truck.
2:22:48 Oh good, the next truck has arrived. Since the last one was out of the way by 2:09, the workers sat around for 13 minutes waiting for the next load. This design hold 9 yards of concrete. Since it should be full, he must have just raised the tag-axle for the backing maneuver because it is supposed to be down for load over 4 yards.
2:23:52 I took this video trying to catch the front wheels sliding when he braked because all of the load was on the rear wheels. It wasn't worth uploading because I basically caught wind noise instead.
2:24:54 I started the video because I thought they were going to unload. Instead, they just ran the drum in fast mixing mode. It seems they add extra water at the site to allow the pump operator to determine the correct fluidity of the concrete.
2:26:24 Taken to get a timestamp of when they started pumping concrete.
2:26:28 I caught the high speed spin of the drum in the above video. This video catches the normal speed of the drum spin when it is unloading. The key is that when everything is working OK, the drum turns continuously. I'm surprised that only a minute has passed since the truck backed in. They normally spend some time turning the drum at high speed in the mixing direction instead of the unloading direction. I think they are adding water to get the consistency that the "blue hat" on the truck wants.
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2:26:24 Enough has been poured that the they have started pushing the vibrator into the new concrete.
2:31:50 The two workers are under the pipe that hold the embankment wall. I'm also catching that this truck is empty; that is, it is spinning fast.
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2:32:04 Still vibrating.
2:36:48 The truck has left so that it...
2:39:28 ...can go to its clean out spot. It does take a while to clean them out.
2:43:00 Killing time while waiting for the next truck by recording the status of this wall. Note the piles of forms that are ready to be built over the footing that has been poured. I was talking one day to another "sidewalk superintendent" who learned that the orange protectors are not needed for steelworkers, but are needed for cement workers.
2:47:14 Since it started cleaning by 2:39:28, it took almost 8 minutes to clean the truck.
2:47:20 The angle of the front wheels show that the turn was to tight to make. Here he is backing up to help get the front end headed away from me (south).
2:47:26
2:47:38 A good view of the back.
2:47:42 Agian, I take pictures early and often when it is a new piece of equipment (and I'm bored).
2:48:42 The little green excavator is still busy digging holes for drain pipes and work is progressing of building the form for the ledge of the Maple wall that has been poured.
A good view of the boom extension. I removed a couple of other pictures because they were redundant. It turns out that they were short, and they had to do an emergency order for a little more. Later I learned it was 1/3 yard.
3:13:06 Finally, the truck arrives. Note that their normal quitting time is 3:00. The reason I waited almost a half hour is because I wanted to see the boom on the pump truck get folded up. I learned later that Ozenga hauls from their mixing plant in Lemont.
3:14:30 I quote my video comment: "The reason I started this video is I saw it stop mixing at high speed. I did capture the drum changing from a mixing direction to a pouring direction. But I stopped the video after I saw the drum change to a mixing direction. The mix evidently needed more water because they did do another round of high speed mixing. So the main reason for posting is that it did catch five cycles of the little excavator digging a trench." This video also shows how long it takes the concrete to get to the outlet when the drum is practically empty (1/3 yard).
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3:15:48 I took this video to verify that it was doing another round of high speed mixing. But you don't need to see another video of that, you can take my word for it. I did not upload this video.
3:16:26 Done mixing, waiting again for the concrete to come out of the truck.
3:17:12 The concrete is finally coming out of the pipe becauase the worker is pushing the pipe around.
3:17:50 All done pouring. Less than a minute of pouring They really did miss it by just a little amount.
3:18:50 But that pour needs to be vibrated.
3:19:16 The driver is walking back to his cab to take the truck to the cleaning area.
3:19:54
3:20:10
3:21:46 "By the time a cement truck that was leaving got out of my way, they already had the end of the pump over in a work area so that they could take the pipe off the end of the hose at the end of the pump's boom."
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3:25:22
3:26:16
3:27:12
3:27:46 Later I concluded that the two men are stuffing a foam plug into the end of the hose that will later (3:38:00 video below) be pushed backwards through the boom pipe to clean out the pipe.
3:29:14 "I normally don't stand where I am when concrete trucks are moving, but I did not want to stop this video. Normally, when trucks are moving I go over to my left behind a fence. I am standing on the public sidewalk next to their other fence. Also note the water being churned in the hopper at the rear of the pump truck."
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2:32:40 A sequence of photos showing the outriggers being pulled in.
3:32:52
3:32:54
3:33:14
3:34:08 Construction is feast or famine and 2017 is a feast. One reason we probably waited so long for the second truck to come to this site is that Ozenga probably has there trucks working at full capacity. Here is an Ozinga truck coming south on Main Street from another site.
3:37:44 The pump truck moved so that the hopper was on the side of the site where it could dump waste cement.
3:38:00 "It is hard to see because a black rear tire is in the background, but concrete is coming out of the bottom of the hopper. You can see the pile of concrete under the hopper that is being made by the clean out. I discovered that You Tube's stabilization algorithm evidently doesn't work if there is too little motion in the video. One reason I took the video was to catch the periodic change in the truck's noise."
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3:41:46 As with all things concrete, it takes a lot of hosing to clean up the equipment.
3:43:40
3:44:02
3:45:52 Getting out of the cab after pulling it away from the edge.
3:46:20 I can't remember what he changed at the control panel.
3:51:14 Notice the pipe at the bottom of the hopper has been reattached.
3:51:32 Throwing a strap over the boom.
3:55:12 Got back in the cab?
3:55:58 Because he if finally leaving.
3:56:04 Notice the worker in the street helping to stop traffic for this truck. He is the one that normally stays after quitting time to sweep up the sidewalk and put the fence back over the entrance area. This time another worker stayed after the others left. As they watched the clean out from the sidewalk where I was taking pictures, I asked the guy I had not seen before if they had to do an emergency order at the end because they ran short. He said "Yes, I had to order another 1/3 yard. I don't know what went wrong. Normally my orders are more than enough." That is when I realized that I was talking to a manager. He must have been staying because there was some besides his own employee on the site --- the driver of the pump truck.
3:56:08
3:56:20
4:04:44 I saw this guy at the site when I first arrived. After some discussion, he and the truck he needed to repair ended up driving to a nearby parking lot because he did not have a hard hat, which is required to be on the construction site. Now he was just parked on Main Street waiting for his next dispatch.
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