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Winter finally arrived in New Mexico!!!!! A couple of days after we finished the last tire in the main U walls we got about a foot of snow. Time to take a vacation!
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We got back from vacation recharged and ready to start on the bond beam. Most of the snow had melted and though it looks cold in the picture below the weather is quite nice.
50's during the day and low 20's at night. We will be using "Thermo-Lube" and covering the newly laid cement with plastic to allow us to build the can walls with sub freezing
temps at night. Thermo-Lube is a product by Quick-Crete. It's expensive but we don't want to wait 'til spring to continue working. If you use the maximum amount it is
supposed to protect the concrete from freezing down to 20 degrees F. I've been told the covering with plastic will give you an additional 5 degrees of protection, plus it slows the
cure by reducing evaporation which is a good thing. We will also be using fibers which also protects against surface freezing by inhibiting the water from stratifying and rising to the top of the cement.
We will be constructing a can/cement bond beam. Two rows of can walls at least 10 inches high separated by 10 inches laid on the top row of tires. Each tire is first dug out to the
cardboard with a post hole digger. Also a 4 foot 5/8 piece of rebar is pounded down into the hole and down through the top 5 rows of tires. The rebar stick up 6 to 8 inches above the
top of the tire. Then the holes are filled with concrete. Once that is done the can walls can be started.
Below is the start of the inner row of can wall on the west cistern. We're using straw bales and 12 ft 2x12s for scaffolding around the cisterns and for the straight sections of the U's.
The can walls are surpassingly easy to build. Most of the bond beam is 3 cans high and you can build all 3 layers at once without any slumping as long as you don't use to
much cement. That seemed to be the only technique I had to reinforce when showing the hired help on how to build what they thought was a very weird wall!!!
We are finishing up the can walls below. It took 3 people, 3 days to build them. After spending 3 months pounding tires this was a big surprise! It also looked very cool! As you can
see below in 3 days the snow is almost gone. The Thermo-Lube/plastic cover/fibers is working really well. No tell-tell freeze marks and the cement looks nice and green
and is getting very hard.... I was pretty worried at first laying all this cement with snow on the ground!
Here's a nice view of the finished bond-beam. We've just started fitting and tying the two rows of 5/8 rebar in between the two can walls. We use the vertical rebar pounded down
into the tires to tie the two rows of horizontal rebar to. Bending the rebar to fit all the curves is quite a challenge but easier to do once you get a little practice.
Robert is tying up the rebar in the picture below
Here's another picture of us fitting and tying the horizontal runs of rebar. As you can see where the can walls run over where the tires step up the depth of the bond beam is pretty
deep. There were sections where it was 20 to 22 inches high. The minimum was 10 inches per Vol. III. Actually it specifies 9 inches but I figured if I built for 10 I was sure to make 9.
We are wrapping up the bond beam after pouring the main pour of 10x10 inches of concrete between the can walls. I used two mixers and 3+ yards of sand gravel mix. 1 to 5
cement ration with fibers. One person on each mixer and one person to pour the concrete. We used buckets to transfer the concrete from the wheelbarrows to the wall. The
straight sections of the U's were the most difficult. Its tough trying to walk down a slopping parallel row of can walls carrying a bucket with 75+ lb. of concrete in it. Especially
when the wall is 10 ft high!!
During the pouring of the beam we placed the shoes for the trusses and the cistern lids. They are easily visible in later pictures. We poured the whole beam in one long day. We
also double wrapped it because it was alot wetter than the can wall cement mix and the weather was predicting temps in the low 20's for the next couple of days
A few weeks later I had to drill some holes into the beam to reset one of the truss shoes that was accidentally pushed out of place when we covered the beam with plastic. Man
that was some tough concrete. It reinforced my confidence in our cold weather pouring methods..
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