Day 7: Use Oil Pressure, Not Blood Pressure!

After yesterday's concrete delivery, the foundations were left to dry for about 30 hours. Tonight, the team from Pohjois-Suomen Perustuspalvelu returned to check the progress. There was water standing in places on top of the concrete, i.e. the temperature at the surface was just above freezing. Fortunately last night's temperature was rather high for this time of the year, only about -8°C, as shown in the graph of the real-time thermometer of the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory.

The pump will still be running for another day keeping the base of the foundations warm. Most of the heat for the drying process comes from within the concrete: the chemical reaction inside generates a lot of heat, which leads to a self-drying process, even in winter, if the mass is just large enough – like under our future fire place.

However, last night a lot of snow fell, as seen in the previous photo. All of the snow on the tarp came overnight. It looks quite bad, and I am not looking forward to the prospect of having to shovel it all out, but we shall worry about that on the weekend. The weather forecast is promising: no more snow fall before the delivery of Our House on Thursday, 17th January.

Today, all the moulds were collected, since the foundations are basically hardened already. When the question arose of how to collect them from the far side of the building, one of the team said "Better use oil pressure than blood pressure!" – Of course he was referring to using the hydraulic pumps of the crane instead of carrying all heavy elements to the lorry.