Sidewalk construction requires attention to detail
Hampton Construction owner Grady Hampton (right) guides the stream of wet concrete while Colby Mens (back to camera) spreads it out in Moses Lake on Wednesday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Chris Hansen, of Hampton Construction, uses a float to smooth wet concrete for a new sidewalk Wednesday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Hampton Construction owner Grady Hampton (right) guides the stream of wet concrete while Colby Mens (back to camera) spreads it out. The company crew was pouring sidewalks in Moses Lake on Wednesday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Christian Romero (right) uses a two-by-four to level a high spot. Cesar Castro is at left. The crew from Hampton Construction poured sidewalks at Fifth Avenue in Moses Lake on Wednesday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Cesar Castro of Hampton Construction tosses a little wet concrete into an air pocket while pouring a sidewalk on Fifth Street in Moses Lake on Wednesday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Cesar Castro, of Hampton Construction, smooths out wet concrete at Fifth Street in Moses Lake on Wednesday.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald (Front to back) Cesar Castro, Colby mens and Christian Romero level and smooth out wet concrete. The Hampton Construction crew was pouring sidewalks at Fifth Street in Moses Lake on Wednesday.
MOSES LAKE — Pouring and leveling concrete for a sidewalk requires precision, a light touch and attention to detail.
Never mind the trowels and floats, the rakes and shovels, the sections of two-by-four used to level uneven spots, or the concrete truck. It was the blue chalk line that told the story.
The blue line was snapped along the foundation of the new HealthSource building on Fifth Avenue in Moses Lake on Wednesday, and it was there to indicate sidewalk height. A sidewalk doesn’t just follow the foundation.
Grady Hampton, owner of Hampton Construction, said the sidewalk has to be laid at a specific slope to make walking easier. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act regulations are even more precise, he said.
Sidewalks also have to drain water away from the building, so they must have a slight slope across the width. And all those calculations are just to set the forms.
Concrete arrives on the truck as a thick liquid, full of rocks, and as such it’s prone to forming air pockets. “You’ve got to play with it,” said Cesar Castro, who was part of the concrete crew. The more it’s worked, the lower the chance of imperfections, he said.
Castro used a section of two-by-four to level the material, and went back with a trowel to work out any possible bubbles.
“That’s what you want to do. Just nice and perfect all the way across, with no air pockets,” he said.
One guy on the crew, Christian Romero, ensured the new concrete met — but didn’t go higher than — the chalk line. That required a trowel and some precise handling.
Colby Mens and Chris Hansen worked the rakes, moving the thick material so it was more or less level. Castro followed with the two-by-four to level it further.
As the truck moved down the sidewalk and the crew followed, Hansen went back over the just-poured areas with a float. It smoothed the surface, but it had another purpose as well.
“It’s all timing,” Hansen said. The float’s second job is to encourage the aggregate (the rocks in the mix) to sink and the cement to rise to the top. That step has to come at just the right time in the sequence.
It took about an hour for the crew to pour the concrete and do the initial leveling, down one side of the building and around the rear and back steps.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached at [email protected].
