As the Year is Coming to a Close...

As the year is coming to a close, we’ve been working through various jobs to finish out the year. A few of these jobs have been completing tower foundations for the Pennsylvania State Police. Some of the locations we have completed this work has been Clarion, Clearfield, Beaver, and Gettysburg. Our latest tower foundation was at Gettysburg, which was one of the closer foundations we completed this year. This was to be completed at a barracks that is under construction, which makes the process of excavating easier. To begin, we found out the grade of an existing concrete pad and the driveway so we could find the depth at which we needed to dig for our tower foundation. Once we knew this, we set our laser appropriately, and began digging. As we were excavating the area, we were simultaneously tying together rebar to strengthen our eventual concrete pad. For these towers we use #7 rebar, and this particular tower we used 10-foot sections of rebar. We tied together about 24 sections for the bottom section and 14 for the top section. The top section is less pieces because we need the actual tower base to fit in between the rebar. After the rebar was tied and the area was excavated, we leveled the bottom of the area excavated and laid the bottom section of rebar. Following this, we put our tower base in the hole. We measured the tower base to ensure it was perfectly center in the hole. After constructing our forms for the concrete, along with setting our concrete pins, we used a level to make sure the concrete pad was going to have the right fall. When this was completed, we had to ensure that the physical tower base was level. After adjusting this appropriately, our next step was to pour concrete. While the second truck was pouring, we set our next rebar section on top of the concrete. In total, it ended up being roughly 24 yards of 5,000 psi concrete. After we finished the concrete, we came back the next day to strip the forms, and install grounding rods for the tower. Take a look at us finishing the concrete!