Cement Pour Prep: Lowering the Pit

Liz and I continued our prep work for the upcoming cement pour this weekend, with PermaSeal coming to watch/observe the whole process. With the new support beam in place, we were able to start getting the pit ready for the pour.

Funny story: at this point, there are really only two big tasks left. One is to remove enough sand to get the pit down to the proper depth/level. The other is to cut a clean line along the broken concrete.

When discussing which task to tackle next, both Liz and I picked the opposite ones. There really are just two approaches, and we both disagreed on what next step to take. I thought it was really funny.

My impulse was to cut the concrete first. Liz felt we should level things first. We ultimately decided to go with getting things level first, and spent a lot of the night doing so.

Pictured above is how things looked, when we started.

While I was shoveling out sand, Liz was raking things down and measuring against a laser level. We actually kept the piece of wood from the last time we did this!

The striped line on the bottom represents 4 inches (the actual depth of what we need to get). The line above with the arrows is adjusted for the height of the laser level itself. So if the red dot is hitting that line, we know we’re good.

We had to do this for multiple spots. Dig, rake, check, repeat.

An additional area we have to do: under the flange from PermaSeal.

Calling it a night. We made good progress, but figured on this being a two-day process. And it may end up going over to three days.

Most of the main pit is at the proper level now, but we still have material under the gray flange to deal with. That all needs to get removed, and also evened down to the same level.

Additionally, we also have to cut clean lines along the concrete ledge (where Liz is sitting).

Prep is moving along. It’s unpleasant grunt work, but every once in a while I remember that we’re doing this big pour on the weekend. And we will have a solid floor in our basement again! Which would allow us to build stairs again! Which would allow us to… all sorts of good things.

Lots of prep for a big day.

Related:
A New Support Beam in the Basement
Pouring the Base for the Basement Column