Dave's "Big Idea" - Let the Building Begin

Today is the start of the final phase of Dave's Big Idea aka known as the dome, covered round pen, the space ship or as Dave has been calling it "the $2 steak".  The $2 steak you ask ... that's when you go to the grocery store to buy a $2 steak & end up spending a whole lot more money on other things.  Well that's kind of what happened with this project ;)  In any case, I have missed blogging about the beginning of the building phase of this project, putting up the cement wall.

The site prep took the better part of the month of April and the wall was poured the week before our Winona Horse Trials on Mother's Day weekend ...whew  Dave was a very busy guy.  As they say a picture is work a thousand words so I'm going to let the pictures do the talking.

A 6' cut into the side of the hill

Digging for the footer ... follow the dotted line

Hauling topsoil to make a berm on the south side of the new show jumping arena

View from west to east - footers have been poured

A different perspective

Pouring the footer

More pouring of the footer

Rebar in the footer - Wie's ears ;)

Unloading the forms

More unloading of forms

Setting the forms and rebar

3 of the 7 trucks that each brought 2 loads!!

Pouring cement

The boom had a reach of more than 100'

The boom is above the trees

Finished product from the inside looking out

The outside

Packing up the forms 

It took 30 days for Dave to prepare the site and 3 days to pour the walls!!

If you missed the earlier installations of Dave's "big idea"  here are the links:

http://stonegatefarmeventing.blogspot.com/2011/12/daves-really-really-big-idea-phase-1.html

http://stonegatefarmeventing.blogspot.com/2012/04/site-prep-for-dome.html

Well I have to go and see what this crew has gotten done so far.  Stay tuned, we should have the roof on in a couple of days.

Jackie