Just got this media release…
170 TRUCKLOADS OF CONCRETE REQUIRED IN ONE DAY TO BUILD THE FOUNDATION FOR FOUR SEASONS HOTEL AND FOUR SEASONS PRIVATE RESIDENCES DENVER
DENVER – January 18, 2008 – On Saturday, January 19, truckload after truckload will be required to pour the concrete mat foundation (the “core” of the tower) for Four Seasons Hotel and Four Seasons Private Residences Denver – 10 straight hours of a continuous concrete pour. The effort will require 170 concrete trucks to fill the 15 foot deep mat foundation, which will serve as the base of the 45-story tower. That’s essentially one truck every three minutes. Media is invited to take pictures and video of this quite visual and memorable component of the construction of what is to be Denver’s fourth tallest building, located at the corner of 14th and Arapahoe Streets.
What: 170 trucks and three large concrete pumps continuously pouring concrete to lay the main foundation for Four Seasons Denver
Date: January 19, 2008
Time: 7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Where: Future Site of Four Seasons Hotel and Four Seasons Private Residences Denver (Corner of 14th and Arapahoe Streets, Downtown Denver)
Come See: 170 truckloads of concrete; 20 trucks an hour; one truck every three minutes pouring more than 6.6 million pounds of concrete for a 15 foot deep foundation. Three concrete pumps continuously working on one major concrete pour.
Additional Note: For those that are having trouble making concrete plans, the pouring can be viewed through the construction site web camera at: www.towerprivateresidences.com.
Worlds Largest Concrete Pour, aka Worlds Slowest News Day.
I love how press releases work. When I worked for a local paper we got bulletins from local businesses or organizations announcing that they would be hanging a new set of photographs in their lobby. Nothing against Denverinfill.com for posting this story here; that's exactly the kind of stuff this site exists to talk about. No doubt local news stations and papers will have some kind of blurb on the cement pour come Saturday or Sunday morning.
It's actually amazing how shallow the foundations are on most huge towers. I'm surprised they're ready to pour the foundation considering how far the current hole has been dug; sure it's deep, but not when you consider that the tower will be over 700 feet tall. The Chicago Spire is being built with a 120-foot-deep foundation; that is, a 120-foot hole for a 2,000-foot tower, which is something like making a pen stand up on one end by stabbing it into one of the holes in a spiral notebook. I'm not an engineer, but I'm guessing it works because the foundations are so big and dense they actually outweigh much of the rest of the building in spite of being so small, sort of the way those weeble toys manage to stand upright because they have a heavy base. I know a mature tree has about 1/6 of its total mass underground as roots (though the longest roots are also 2-6 times the total height of the tree in length), so if nature is a guide, it's probably safe to assume skyscrapers are not in danger of tipping over.
I'm no engineer either, but I don't think the base of the tower is the full foundation like it is on houses and midrise structures. A History Channel show I saw once talked about how they drill MANY small cylindrical tubes MUCH deeper than the base and pierce deep into bedrock. They then fill these with concrete I believe. Bedrock won't ever shift or settle the way dirt will. It's basically like bolting the roots of the building directly into the Earth's crust. I may have the details not quite right though.
Well for those of us at ConcretePumping.com we love this stuff. We would like to see the live web cam. were is that? also who is pumping the concrete and are there any pictures?
170 trucks. How many Jimmy Hoffas is that?
I think Anon 10:37 is on to something. I watched them do that same process over at 1LP. I imagine they've done it over at Four Seasons too.