The boys from DLC Foundations were here early this morning to finish stripping the forms off the foundation. They arrive around 6:40 AM and are hard at it by 7:00. Carrie, the foreman of the project told me that this was the hardest foundation of this size that he's ever poured. They had to use a concrete pump and load the concrete down into the forms from the top. With a house sitting just a few feet above the forms, and in some cases right on top of the forms, it was difficult. They had to pour the concrete two feet at a time, so that means they had to lug that hose all the way around the foundation four times. They started a bit earlier the day they poured, and I'm not sure if they ever took a break that day even for lunch. It's hard to picture just how big the foundation really is. Carson Benner made me a cool diagram that shows how much concretewe used. It has seven cement trucks which equals 
in weight 17 full grown elephants. If the concrete were made into a column three feet by three feet it would be over 200 feet tall, and if you filled wine bottles with it and stacked them one on top of another, the bottles would interfere with airline traffic at seven thousand feet! I wasn't able to get Carson's art work to load onto my blog, but I'll try to figure it out.
Right now it looks as though you could play volleyball in our basement. Rick Kennedy, my next door neighbor, threatened to install a basketball hoop when I wasn't looking. I think it will look more normal when they lower the house a couple of feet, and we build up the floor about half a foot. I think it will, anyway. I'm pretty sure this foundation won't be going anywhere. The house should be good for another hundred and forty years or so.