You only get one shot.
Eight cubic metres on the first truck pumped out in 15 minutes into our stem wall and three cubic metres on the second for the piers. Eleven cubic metres weighing in at 24,500 kg.
Four hours later and all the concrete was placed, finished and setting up and we were shattered.
A huge thanks to the volunteers (press ganged into service): mum, Karen, John, Andrew, Drew, Genevieve and Alex for pounding, tamping, screeding and finishing the wall and pier tops and inserting the anchor bolts for the wall plate.
Four days later we stripped the forms and there stood our wall and piers, cast in stone for the next thousand years.
Onwards and upwards!
The pump arm
The bloke controlling the pump
Andrew thrilled to be on the job at 8 am
Genevieve thrilled to be on the job at 8 am
Drew thrilled to be on the job at 8 am
John just getting on with the job at 8 am
Finishing up nicely
Love that curve
Guess who gets to clean up this mess?
Oh baby! Stripping that form
The form bag worked flawlessly
Nice hippie wall
the handcrafted life 
So wonderful — cannot wait to see finished house pics!
Better yet, come and stay in the finished house! Our first overseas guests – Ali, Tris and Felix – are already booked in for a year from now, though Chris Blake as threatened to beat them here. I better get framing.
Whahooo! Nice work. That hippie wall looks like something to be proud of. I hope we got those grid lines in the right place.
I’m 99.9% sure we nailed them (in the right place). So much so that I cast it in concrete – the work of a sick, jetlagged, over beered Kiwi. Wait a minute, no wonder the wall is curved…