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A typical day

You are on site before sunrise because concrete sets on its own schedule. Set and check the forms, place reinforcing steel, then the trucks arrive and the pour begins, which is the loud, fast, no-stopping part. Once it is placed and screeded flat you wait, watching the surface, because everything after this is about timing. Float it too early and you trap water, too late and it is concrete. Then edging, jointing, troweling, sometimes by machine, sometimes on your knees. Clean every tool before it hardens, or they are gone.