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(Mr. Kolb). They turn the vibrators on and
the whole form shakes, and all the air bubbles
and all that from the concrete come up to the top
and it smooths all the sides.
Okay?
If you leave these vibrators on too long, what happens?
(Dr. Wahby). Segregation.
(Mr. Kolb). Segregation of your concrete.
All your stone, what's in concrete?
Come on, you're the senior.
(female speaker). Gravel or something?
(Mr. Kolb). Aggregate, sand, portland
cement, and water.
And when you call, you know, your mixture is, you know,
by weight, how many pounds of each one are in there.
But if you vibrate it too much, all your aggregates and all your
sand will go down to the bottom and all your water and
portland cement will just stay in that one area.
It'll be real smooth at the top and on the bottom it'll
look like somebody shot it with a shotgun.
Okay?
(Dr. Wahby). Do you use any add-mixtures?
(Mr. Kolb). We use add-mixtures in here,
we use self-consolidating concrete so we can
get away from vibrating.
There's an add-mixture out there you put it in your concrete and
you put it out there and it just goes pffft.
And it goes out real, it settles itself,
self-consolidating concrete.
(Dr. Wahby). So the one extreme is
self-consolidating and the other is zero slump?
Where do you go in between?
(Mr. Kolb). Zero slump concrete you can
take it and if you dump it out of the bucket it will,
if you take zero slump concrete and take it in your hand and
squeeze it it will stay like a circle, the shape of your hand.
(Dr. Wahby). What kind product do you
use for zero slump?
(Mr. Kolb). Typically, zero slump concrete
will be used for hollow-core flooring becuase it's
put through a machine and it's pressurized, and
then it extrudes it out.
So it doesn't need water because if it has too much
water in there and vibrates it, all of the cores will collapse
and everything else.
With concrete like this, in housing panels, we use
self-consolidating because we don't want to vibrate it.
Okay?
This building is self-contained.
It's heated during the winter time.
It has these, as you can see, the electronic heating on
the side of the walls, the radiant heat.
This will stay about 60 degrees in the dead of winter.
(Dr. Wahby). So, you work in
sunshine or rain?
(Mr. Kolb). We work in rain or whatever,
because we pour inside.
Here you can see some smaller sections of soundwall, and
you can see on some sound wall panels we've built up the
bottom because this panel only has to be 9 feet high.
That panel has to be 13 feet high.
So you can do your different heights by building up
your form underneath it.
The question was before about painting and...alright,
where's the door?
(male speaker). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). That's a polyurethane.
In this room...I'm not going to take you in there right now,
but in this room we have four painting bays.
We can take the product out of the form, put it on the A-frame,
bring it in that room in 20-degree, 10-degree, 5-degree
weather, bring it inside, and then paint it before
we bring it outside.
Because most paints or stains require 50 degrees and rising
before you can apply it, that's how we get it.
Keep going that way.
(Dr. Wahby). Now, what will this form
be [unclear audio]?
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, this is actually for a,
this is a reinforcement that they're requiring
in the soundwall.
They wanted epoxy-coated stirrups.
That's what you see a stirrup bar like that with the
hard bend, and they have not come back and touched this up
yet because when you can see them touching the epoxy up
it looks like a darker green.
(male speaker). Do you use any welding at all?
(Mr. Kolb). No, no.
(Dr. Wahby). For rebar?
(Mr. Kolb). No.
(female speaker). Excuse me, question.
(Mr. Kolb). Question.
(female speaker). What are these called?
I know that they're used to, like, tie them together.
(Mr. Kolb). Those are rebar ties.
(female speaker). Rebar ties.
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, that's what they're
called, they're called bar ties in the industry.
Those are epoxy coated because you can't use a standard black
rebar tie, which is just carbon steel, on epoxy coating because
there'll be a chemical reaction.
You use epoxy-coated ties with epoxy-coated bars.
You can use carbon steel ties with galvanized and
there won't be a reaction.
(female speaker). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Why is the blocks
on top of that?
What they're probably doing on that is making an impression
in the piece below, and if you don't put weight on it
when you pour the concrete it will lift the form up.
So they put extra weight on there to keep the thing down.
That could be for window frames or something else like that,
too, because if you don't put it flat on the form it'll want to,
they'll call that lifting out of the piece.
You'll see the frame and the form like this, so you
weight it all down.
(female speaker). But, like, they don't want it to
stay in there for too long?
(Mr. Kolb). No, no, what they'll do is when
they strip this form away from it, they take the blocks of
concrete off first and then they take all the forms away from it.
(female speaker). And then they stand it up?
(Mr. Kolb). Then you stand it up, yep.
(Dr. Toosi). So if there is no weight on the
concrete when they are pouring, the concrete has
a chance to slip through?
(Mr. Kolb). Yep, but there's probably
something in there that they're holding down to the face of the
form and if that's not there when you lift it, remember,
concrete is poured, and it comes down with such force
it will lift stuff off the bottom.
(female speaker). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). This is a system that, this is a
patented system that we're working with the inventor,
and this will actually go underneath roadways.
Right now in cities like Chicago or other places like that,
they're replacing or they're widening roads.
And what happens is they dig the road out and these big, big
bundles of electricity and phone lines and all that are in these
big huge cables and unfortunately, when they
put them in there, they didn't mark them.
So they might have a bundle with 100 cables in there and
they don't know where they go to.
So typically what they have to do is they decommission the
entire line, they put up a temporary alongside and then
they have somebody come in here and take this line and tap it
and say, okay, that's phone and mark it, this one is a fiber
optic, this one is cable.
We were working with an inventor that, instead of messing around
with that, take these concrete pieces and encapsulate over that
big bundle of cables and then build your road on top of it.
Saves time, saves money, and things like that.
This is a design by an engineer who has patented it.
We are thinking of, we're hopefully taking this throughout
the entire United States.
It hasn't even hit the streets yet, so it's confidential.
[audience laughter].
No more pictures.
[more laughter].
No, no, no, no, no.
(Dr. Wahby). A form like this then would be
replaced after how many pours?
(Mr. Kolb). A form like this will be
replaced after one pour.
You know, we try to do, whenever we can, use steel because it's
reusable, recyclable, and things like that, but realities,
some of these pieces are not uniform in size.
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Exactly, because once you pour
something in concrete you have to start watching because
this stuff will all start delaminating from each other.
Put your hand on here, folks.
(male speaker). Oh, it's still warm.
(Mr. Kolb). What, you feel it?
It's still curing.
Concrete, when it's curing, gives off heat.
You take this stuff in the dead of winter, you bring it outside,
you see smoke just flying off this piece because the natural
reaction of the portland cement and everything else,
yeah, I know, some people may want to lay on this now
because you're too cold.
(male speaker). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, we can take this off in
16 to 18 hours, and this concrete right here
will be about 3500 psi.
And as you'll see, cylinders like this, every single piece
of concrete will have at least four of these.
And then when they break them after 18 hours and say, okay,
now you can pull the piece out of here.
If they don't get it in 18 hours, what happens,
they'll break it in 24 hours.
This piece will sit in the form until the Quality Control
Department says it's time to go.
(Dr. Wahby). Do you use any
accelerators at all?
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, how much, I have no idea.
Depending on the weather, depending on...
(Dr. Wahby). [unclear audio].
(Mr. Kolb). Exactly.
(Marty). All right, I see the
other group passing.
(Mr. Kolb). Yeah, we're, I'm getting
too long here, folks.
Yeah, they're probably not asking Andy any questions.
(Marty). Well, he probably
wouldn't answer anyway.