Footing Prep and Pour

Our basement contractor can complete as many as seven foundations per week, all year long (with some slowdown in winter due to the far less than ideal conditions).  They have done our last three basement projects, one in each of the last three years.  With that kind of volume comes a specialized division of labour, and a focus on avoiding costly mistakes.  The process is systematic and once unleashed the builder basically has to stay out of the way until the job is done.

The footing is prepped by a two man crew.  Then the concrete supplier is dispatched with a placing crew.  The cribbing crew can then arrive and set up the forms, to be closely followed by another concrete supply/placing crew.  Finally a form stripping crew removes the forms and loads them back on a trailer to be hauled to the next job.

In this photo the outline of the building is clearly distinguished

Once the footing is prepped it is checked for compliance with the engineers specification.  In this case the perimeter footing is meant to be 24 inches wide by 8 inches deep with three rows of continuous 10 mm rebar, and the middle footing 30 inches wide.  Our excavator has done a good job of removing just enough soil that the bottom of the hole is at the ideal height.  Any deeper would mean pouring more concrete into the form, and any shallower the footing would not meet the specification.  

The middle footing is 30 inches wide. Note the rebar is wired off the ground such that the bar is always at least 3 inches deep within the concrete.  This ensures the strength of the pad plus prevents moisture and rust of the metal

Once complete, the placing crew arrives with the pump truck.  Since this is an easy pour, the job proceeds quickly.  Approximately 12 meters of concrete is poured into the footings.

The extension of the pump truck makes delivery of the concrete much easier than any other means of distributing the concrete.  

A shallow trench called a 'keyway' is embedded into the footing.  This provides a better bond between wall and footing at this key interface. The backfill of the concrete wall can exert considerable force on the wall, possibly enough to damage the wall if care is not taken

The footing is poured and the placing crew is finished