Garage Concrete Pouring - Day 1

Early this morning, the City of Elmhurst building inspector showed up and gave his blessing to our footings.  The process allows for the City's inspectors to make a "pre-pour" inspection to ensure that the contractor has complied with the code and requirements.  Thankfully, we passed the inspection.

About 15 minutes after the inspector signed off, this guy showed up.

They got busy right away filling in the perimeter footings.    They had to cart the concrete by hand to the far edges of the garage. 

Once they filled the footings (16" deep), they moved on to filling the entire frame with concrete.  I had to run to work, so Nat kept me up-to-speed with her iPhone.   They smoothed it to a nice, level surface - using a piece of lumber as a screed board.

They moved on to more sophisticated equipment when they wanted to get the surface real smooth.

They filled the main garage, then moved on to the little 3X6 foot framed area adjacent to the garage.  We're going to build a permanent fireplace on top of the slab, so we made the slab strong.  It will float and heave a bit in the winter, but the design accounts for that factor.

Things are progressing well.  Within a week, we'll be putting up the walls and framing it out.