Monday overnight there was a bit of rain, and it raised some concerns in Doug’s mind regarding the newly poured and sealed front porch. He sprayed some water on the surface, and the amount of fall from the part of the porch closest to the house to the outside edge was not enough to keep water from running back toward the house.
We spent about a half an hour staring and thinking and reviewing options. We could have the surface polished down, with more taken off the front edge than the back. This could work, but it would be very expensive and would cause a significant difference in appearance as you moved away from the house due to the amount of aggregate that would be exposed by the grinding off of layer after layer on the front of the porch. Alternatively, we could try to minimize the amount of water that would fall on the slab by carefully arranging the roof overhang, and caulking around the front door.
In the end, we decided that a fight against the elements (especially water) was not one the house would win in the long run. Enter the sledgehammer.
I cringed a little bit upon the first swing, and even more when I realized that the blows from the huge hammer did little but make small dimples in the surface of the porch. The ’state mix’ did indeed set up and get very hard very fast. We tried for perhaps another 30 minutes with little progress before the next load of concrete was on the way.
We took a break from demolition and filled the holes adjacent to the master bedroom with concrete, and dumped out enough on the ground to fill the four additional short columns there that will support the master bedroom deck, and more around the back of the house to fill the three columns on the back patio. I thought filling a bucket with concrete and hoisting it up to pour into the front porch columns was difficult, but adding eight steps up a ladder to the mix to reach the top of the 10′ tubes was yet another level of complexity. A few hours later brute force prevailed, and all the columns were filled, leveled, and plumb with the house.
We then returned to demo, and made a little more progress when we raised the front edge of the porch with a hydraulic jack. Raising the slab (as much as 7″ thick in spots) off of the gravel bed put a lot more stress on the slab and kept the force of the hammer blows from being diffused. Bit by bit we chipped away, with the progress getting easier and easier the more of the slab we removed. I got a good lesson in the power of steel reinforcement, as the rebar and remesh that was added made the removal of the slab nearly impossible in spots - the concrete literally had to be pulverized before it could be removed.
We didn’t finish until Wednesday morning, and not long after we had another load of concrete (this was ’shot-crete’ with fibers, designed for spraying on walls) arrive. Doug had set up some forms at the beginning of the driveway, and we poured a slab about 40 feet long of varying thickness. The driveway pour was relatively un-complicated, but allowed me to practice my burgeoning skills a bit.
A little rain at the end of the week was not unwelcome, all the hard work tearing out the porch left me feeling like I had been hit by a truck. The framers should be here early next week with any luck, and the latest word from Micah is that we should go ahead without him. He can polish around the walls if they are there - this will be more effort for his crew, but he didn’t want to hold us up any more. The other benefit is any scuffs or minor damage inflicted by the framers or roofers can likely be polished out closer to the end of the construction.