San Diego Concrete Pour
25 Jun 2007
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Thanks to reader Katica who sent in this photo of a concrete pour in San Diego. Notice the trucks lined up at the top of the photo.

From her email: “This was a 258 truck-ballet in which the contractor placed 11,500 yards of concrete in one monolithic pour that got started at five in the morning and finished by three in the afternoon.”
Did you do the math? That’s 258 trucks in 10 hours. 26 trucks per hour. Or if you like, 1 truck every 2 minutes 20 seconds.
Written by Jimmy Stamp in Architecture &

9 comments
26 June, 2007 at 6:13 pm
From what i understand a concrete truck holds 8 to 12 yards. So if the placed 11,500 yards they needed the 258 trucks to make roughly 4 trips each.
Very impressive photo though
28 June, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I agree. Quite an impressive photo. What is the project? Just a massive slab of concrete?
29 June, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Very interesting image! I’m interested in the project as well. Why was this method of pouring required?
3 July, 2007 at 4:38 pm
It’s an impressive scheduling operation. Thirteen pump trucks are operating in this photo with quite a few others as backup. All the concrete mixers on site scares me. It still takes awhile to empty a mixer and you don’t want the mixers to wait too long or the batch will become useless. A thirty minute wait is too long if you want a quality batch.
I don’t get the numbers quoted above though. The current slab being poured looks to be about 150′x150′which is 2500SY. Assuming that it is a mat footing, it would have to be 4.5 yards thick to be a monolithic pour. Even if the whole building had a mat footing with an assumed area of 5000SY then the thickness would be 2.3 yards or almost 7 FT? Does that sound right for that type of footing?
6 July, 2007 at 6:54 pm
The project is the San Diego, BAYSIDE condos ($795,000 to $12,000,000.each condo, 282 total.)
The photo shows the southern half (half!) of the ten-foot-thick RAFT slab, which will support the 35 story tower.
10 July, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Still not thick enough to prevent the Decepticons from detecting the AllSpark. Jusy sayin’.
22 December, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Ten foot thick raft slab? Oy!
11 September, 2008 at 3:59 pm
do we really need 4000 slump tests?
29 November, 2008 at 1:59 pm
So where are all the concrete cylinders? With this much concrete the project should have been flooded with samples.