A friend and I went to the lot with a load of Craig’s List bricks for future landscaping. (Poor old ’85 Nissan pickup, known in the family as Grandpa’s truck.) The main purpose of the trip: to pick up the structural plans for the studio-with-our-garden-on-top from the engineer, and submit them to the regional district for our permit application – apparently, our first permit only covered the house. I had also scheduled a meeting with a roofer for a quote.
When I arrived yesterday, I learned that the concrete for the basement floor would be poured today. We could not use flyash concrete for this purpose, because it takes longer to set, and the concrete finisher needed to level and smooth the concrete within a few hours.
The estimated 4 cubic meters of concrete arrived in the cement truck, with a gravel truck to pull it back up the steep driveway. I arrived back just in time for the drama:
With about 100 feet of 4” webbing and 30 feet of chain as a tow rope, the dumptruck starts pulling the gravel truck backward up the hill. I can hear the webbing cracking almost immediately. It breaks and the heavy hook springs back into the cement mixer, like a bungee cord. As one of the workers commented: that would kill you. Ron runs up to move his truck out of harm’s way. They hook up another. It strains and pulls and moves the truck up the hill, then separates with lightning speed. The cement truck drives all the way to the bottom to try to get a run at it. Half-way up, the web splits again. And one more time, before the truck finally makes it up to the top.
We breathe a sigh of relief. The drivers scurry off as though this type of adventure happens every day. For me, it’s a scary maneuver, a graphic reminder of why tradespeople must carry “Worksafe” insurance.
