Pouring the Roof Domes - Disaster (Almost) Strikes!

The construction drawings call for the roof domes to be covered in three layers of mortar by hand. We, again pressed for time since the season was nearing the end, decided to bring in the heavy hitters and pour the dome in one shot.

Ready-mix concrete and pumper truck on site

Pouring begins

And then... disaster strikes... ALMOST. The force of the concrete impacting the domes was too much for the diamond mesh to handle and the mesh started giving way. In one area too much concrete was poured at once that even the rebar started to flex too much.

Anyway, in the end we had to do a lot more manual work than expected but managed to get all the domes (mostly) covered.

   

We were so exhausted by the end of it that we took the rest of the day and night to recuperate. This is what it looked like the next day.

 
We had to add lots of reinforcement on the fly to avoid disaster

 

Note the unevenness on the interior due to the diamond mesh giving way

 

Note the unevenness on the exterior also