Manual Labor

             

                   

 

After a very long weekend of cement mixing and drain setting, the novelty of this project tends to wear off a bit! Saturday we made three trips to the building supply store for 3 truck loads of sand and gravel mixture and made lots and lots of cement. The first stage of the floor pouring entailed filling trenches that we dug where the weight of the vats will put the most pressure on the winery floor. Ten metric tons per vat is a lot of weight to put on a floor! So we have to reinforce the areas that will be under the most pressure. This is done by digging a trench that is 2 meters by .50m by .50 meters deep. Lots of fun to dig out when you consider that the ground is made of sandstone! Once they were dug out, we put rebar in the holes and then filled them with cement. No, we have no experience with cement, yes, we are crazy! But we have at least consulted with an architect, and engineer and a contractor, so let's hope we get it right! After filling the holes, which currently look like freshly dug graves, we started working on setting the drain in place. We have purchased linear drains that are 1 meter each and will run the length of the winery floor. Next weekend we will pour the floor up to the edge of these drains, but we wanted to make sure that they were already fixed into place before we started pouring the actual floor. Boy, I sure hope there are no professionals out there reading this and chuckling at all of the mistakes we are making along the way!