Cement finishers used their collective thinking cap to finish a summer job at Fred H. Turner Student Services Building, along with plenty of help from F&S construction laborers.
The goal: get cement into the basement through an underground entrance. Mission very possible.
Picture a Cement Truck
Picture a cement truck. It has that giant spout to spread the viscous compound directly where there’s a street or pathway. This was not the case here, just small doses needed.
First, have the cement truck parked on Sixth Street, where it emptied batches of the wet cement into a wheelbarrow. That is rolled through a narrow alleyway and up a hill at the base of the building. There, in the ground, is a wall-adjacent grate that drops a level to a door that leads to the basement, right near system machinery like pipes, compressors, and boilers.
Cement finishers and laborers shoveled cement from the wheelbarrow into 5-gallon buckets, which were lowered by rope and hook to the basement level. Dozens of re-fills were necessary to get the amount needed.
Last Time
See below for a previous cement finishers shop spotlight.