The Big Pour for the Flag Building in Clearwater

The Big Pour, originally uploaded by jetteroheller.

As I’m fascinated with the whole Flickr geotagging concept, I just back-loaded a whole road trip I took in 1999 into my Flickr account, and geotagged the whole lot.

One of the stops I made on this trip was in Clearwater, Florida – where I stopped at the Church of Scientology as my sister was working there.

The project going on at the time was an engineering marvel that I’m still intrigued by to this day. The new Flag delivery building, the largest Church of Scientology building on the planet, was having its foundation poured that day — as massive undertaking the locals referred to as “The Big Pour”.

Four concrete pumpers and a bazillion cement trucks were involved in an 18-hour pour that had to complete the entire foundation in one go. As the entire building sits below the water table, the only way to ensure a 100% flawless and watertight basement was to pour the entire foundation in one go, and thereby have one, solid slab at the bottom of the building.

The pour was completed over 6 hours under the allocated time, resulting in a number of bewildered construction workers who were curious how it was that they were able to finish so fast.