Let's Talk Concrete

When I drove up to the Unitarian Society on Monday morning, four cement trucks were parked along Santa Barbara Street, diesel engines idling, waiting their turn to feed the foundation footing forms of our new terrace and storage area. 28 yards of concrete was poured that morning and from the street I couldn't see where it went. It was like it simply disappeared into a hole. Which essentially is was happened. We will be tending to those holes filled with concrete (footings) in the coming weeks and our structures should rise up like flowers in a garden, with the addition of much more re-bar, concrete and sweat.

Over the past few weeks Schipper Construction and Anacapa Concrete Co. have been strategically digging holes & trenches and filling them with re-bar and concrete all over the back corner of our future Jefferson Courtyard and Terrace. It began with a pretty technical process called "slotted underpinning". This process was required in order to extend one corner of the foundation of the Sanctuary down to the level of the basement below our new terrace....without causing the Sanctuary to "droop" downward. Instead of digging-out the entire area below that corner, only a few carefully spaced 6' wide holes were dug at one time. These were then surrounded by forms, filled with a maze of re-bar and filled with concrete. A few days later, after the concrete was hard, adjacent holes were dug, formed and filled with concrete. This process was repeated until one continuous wall of interconnected concrete sections "underpinned" the sanctuary foundation. Our sanctuary foundation is actually stronger than ever as a result.

In the coming weeks we should see walkways, stairways and retaining walls materializing throughout the lower campus. We are definitely building for the ages, with the help of a lot of concrete.