Foundation - Pumped not Poured

I have been a little behind the times posting, it's been a crazy few days, a long weekend followed by a crazy few days.  So I will be posting a few posts to catch up over the next day or two.

Let's travel back to Wednesday of last week, the frame for the foundation walls was put up and I wanted to get an idea of what the timing of the pouring of the concrete so on Thursday morning I made a call over to the PM, Bob, to ask when the walls would be poured.  I hoped to be able to get out to the site while the pour was occurring to get some video of it, but when I called over Bob let me know the concrete pump was already there and the foundation would be done soon.  I never heard of a concrete pump, so I asked about it.  Bob explained that since the walls were so tall and the back of the house so far off the street that they wouldn't actually be pouring it but rather pumping it in.

Here is a video of concrete pump at work on foundation walls.

Since concrete is in liquid form before drying they are able to use a pump to push it through a long tube to where ever it is needed.  Seems like I get to learn as we move through the process.  The pump truck has a reciever bin that the concrete trucks pull up to and pour the concrete into, which is then pumped out and into the foundation.

After we discussed the pumping not pouring of the foundation walls, we discussed the upcoming schedule.  The weather turned very nice into the upper 70s so the foundation would only need a day to dry enough to remove the frames, where as the surrounding houses required 48 hours due to the 40 and 50's weather.  Due to the fact that only one day was necessary for the concrete to dry the frames would be removed on Friday.  That would be followed on Monday with the waterproofing, then an inspection on Tuesday, and finally on Wednesday the ground would be backfilled around the foundation walls.