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Filed under Construction
Brought to you by your representative on site: Jay Fritz
Since my last posting, as you know, we received additional rain fall which resulted in upper left hand picture. As much as I don't like working in the mud the water still needs to be pumped off the building site. I remember at the end of that day, when I took my boots off, I felt like I was floating. I thought you would get a laugh from the top center picture where it looks like the local wild life is reading the sign and trying to tell his buddies not to go that way. There are many days when I arrive before sunrise and see deer down in the bottom of the flood plan area.
Back to business. The top right picture shows the workers finishing the steel inside the wall before the inside form goes up. Notice the boards in the wall just to the right of the workers, this is the window in the 5th grade Sunday School room. The middle left picture is of the concrete conveyor that moves the mix as needed much quicker then by hand, saving time and money. A question that I have gotten several times is how do the workers get the concrete to flow around all that rebar. If you notice in the center picture one of workers is holding, what looks like a long hose connected to a motor. This is a concrete vibrator. At one end is a metal cylinder that they push down into the concrete to vibrate around all the rebar and fill in all the air pockets. The next picture is the day after the pour, they strip the forms so that the concrete can cure faster. Again to the right you can see the 5th grade window.
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In the bottom two left pictures it shows one of the ways to control costs and speed the project along, that is to have more then one company doing the same type of work. While we have one company, whose better at walls and footings, working on the foundation; another company who is better at surface concrete goes to work on the curbs and sidewalk for the parking lot. It is not that either company couldn't do the other part of the job, they just can't do it as cost effectively.
So as of the 8th of December we have about 70% of the structural concrete finished, all the curbs and walks for the 1st stage of parking lot and almost half the rock for the asphalt base laid. If we can get the weather to cooperate there is a possibility that the Sunday the 13th will be the last day we will need the shuttle for several months. The other most common question is "Are we on schedule". Two answers to that. My schedule that allows for a 10% weather delay "NO", God's schedule, since He is in charge of the weather "YES". I will let you choose which answer is correct.
The last picture I want to bring your attention is the bottom right of the contractors lunch. We do this every Wednesday at 12:00 for any workers who are on site that day. We provide a hot meal and a warm place to eat, as well as free drinks. The meal is prepared by you the members of our church, brought into the freezer, then thawed, cooked and served by other volunteers. The look on the guys faces when I tell them that they get a hot meal for free is priceless. I want to say thanks to all who have cooked and served these past weeks and a special thank to Kim Funke for organizing and coordinating this ministry that touches the workers in a very down to earth way. It is not exactly feeding the five thousand, but I think they are just as thankful and amazed.
More to come soon.
