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Concrete
OK, I have cast my concrete!
Ingredients: 21 kilo of gravel, 14 kilo of sand, 7 kilo of cement and water.
Preparation: Put everything into a hod and stir it well.
Serving: In a hole in the ground, measuring 26x26x36 cm.
Garnishment: The foot of a clothes-dryer.
This was another ‘nice’ job. First I had to destroy the very neat pavement in our backyard on the spot where we wanted to put our clothes-dryer. Then I had to dig a hole of 26x26x36 cm, but I had to go a little deeper, because afterwards, the pavement would have to be on top of it.
I didn’t have a hod or anything else that was big enough, so I decided to do it bucket-by-bucket. Stirring was a problem too: Much too heavy! A mixer (no, not from the kitchen) was needed! For that you have these big ‘rods’, that you can put into your power drill. It worked! The machine got a bit hot and started to smell funny, but it has a torque-limiter right? And that activated many times. But it should be able to handle that, right?
It became a mess: Soon there was concrete all over the place. I should have used a deeper bucket of course. You always do that if you use the mixer in the kitchen! Then I just threw everything into the pit and stirred it there. That was better.
And then for the garnishment. The foot had to be exactly on the right spot, perfectly level with the pavement and perfectly vertical! But the stupid thing floated in the concrete. Every time I had it positioned, it started to rise slowly out of the concrete. Archimedes told me, that I had to make the foot as heavy as the amount of concrete it should move. So I put a stack of tiles on it and on top of that my water-level.
It has worked! This afternoon, when we arrived home, the foot was exactly vertical, perfectly level and firmly fixed in the concrete. Now just repair the pavement. Pfffff, what a weekend…
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