Looking at the quiet orderliness of fresh foundation it was difficult to imagine the intensity of sound and action the day before. That’s our niece and nephew, Lucia and Jack, visiting from New York City, enjoying the unusually warm weather for SF and our newly-poured foundation curb.
Fifteen trucks full of concrete unloaded at 55 Sheridan today. Passersby fell awestruck at the orderliness and massiveness of the effort. Whiteside showed why they’re the go-to concrete firm in San Francisco.
The mat slab foundation contains many thousands of pounds of reinforcing steel embedded in some 15 truckloads of concrete courtesy of Whiteside Construction. Taking some photos the day before with my trusty Mamiya 7 medium format film camera, I was suddenly overcome with the urge to brain-twister-maneuver the camera through the gaps in the rebar. That effort earned us this picture which shows yo the bottoms of contractor Kevin Birmingham’s boots. Structural engineer David Strandberg offered helpfully “I hope whoever took that got out before they poured the concrete.” We love David.
Curb forms border both property lines, waiting to foot the API panels which will form the skin of the building.
API panels look like this in residential applications.
Clean water, rain water, sewer water, electricity, garden lighting controls and telecom all have one thing in common: they should be underground. And with 24 inches of steel reinforced concrete, we needed to get it right the first time.
And in the process of all this, we discovered a powerful reminder of why we invested so heavily in underground soil enhancements: a black seam in the sand deposited by the great fire and quake from 100 years ago.
Immediately after the city DBI signed off on our Shoring Plan Ryan Engineering began building forms for the odd shoring piers.
They poured concrete into those the next day.
24 hours later they were building forms for the even numbered piers. And then they poured concrete into those. Phew!
Basically everyone one on the Design Team and the Build Team convened on-site within hours to collaboratively create a shoring plan that was approved by city DBI officials within 24 hours of when our neighbor notified us of the appearance of their foundation hairline crack.
Terrific teamwork and proof of professionalism under duress. It’s easy to be polite when everything’s going smooth. It’s the folks who stay cool under fire that are the real pros and we saw that in action.
