Here’s my nightmare, I worked for a couple months building my Icf’s on my 4000 sq ft house, just me and a friend taking our time doing it right not cutting any corners, everything’s to perfection, finally I was confident enough to call for the concrete, which required a large boom pump, about 6:20am the boom shows up with one of the owners of the company at the wheel, he starts setting up everything’s cool, his concrete trucks were running a little behind no biggie, 1^st truck shows up around 8am, everyone’s ready so we start the pour, were going around the first lift and its perfect, 2^nd truck perfect,3^rd truck perfect, 4^th truck was pumping a little dry but we were starting the final pour so whatever just kinda wrestled it down between the top 2 #4 rebar’s im still cool, everything’s going ok, here’s where it gets bad, 4th truck leaves, 5^th trucks backing up and gets stuck in some sand that the previous trucks mucked up, now im getting nervous, everyone’s throwing down 2x12’s and trying to dig his axles out, ITS STUCK and isn’t moving, hours go by and finally they were able to pull him out with another truck, great for them but I need the truck back by the pump so I can get my frikin concrete, so while everyone was trying to get the truck free for all those hours the pump operator/owner allowed his pump to set up with concrete all in his hopper and boom, remember we started pumping around 8am and now its 8pm and the sun is coming down there beating on the pump trying to free it and I still can get a truck back there to finish, so now I have one wall that’s complete and all the rest are ¾ of the way up and im coming to the realization that im going to have to have a cold joint, that’s my sad story and here’s my question to the pro’s how bad is a cold joint pour to finish it and how responsible is the concrete company for this situation, I bought my ICF’s, Concrete, pump, bracing, everything from this company and I feel they really let me down with this, let me add that I am not wealthy by any means I worked hard to save up to do a nice ICF house for years and I feel that the house is going to lose all its integrity because of this cold joint pour that’s planed for Monday, please voice your opinions I would really appreciate any input. Thanks Guys

Hey Chris,

      as far as the concrete in the wall its fairly level 6" to 8" diffence and very rough which i think is a good thing vs. a smooth level surface? lintels i think are still good we got up to about window height when the truck got stuck. theres still plenty of steel #4's runing horizontaly and #5's every 2 feet vert. with a double #4 at the top, and the concrete that was jamed in the pump didnt end up in the walls, the operator was there till midnight with an air chisel.

It is good of you to take that shot from me, without malice.

Even though it was the "rookies" that toasted your laneway....you have to be prepared to "idiot proof" things.

No pumper ever wants to be in the situation he was in.

Good luck and take care.

I have read this thread with intrest because our basement pour will be 320' of 12' walls, 94 cubic yards of concrete.  I want to insure I don't have to 'quit' before it's done. We'll start early!

With the home having a simple foot print, how would you pace the trucks? Or better yet, how long does it take to pump one truck load? I'm sure once the pour starts we can slow them down or speed them up but, just tring to get an idea.

Patrick T