Second Home Foundation Pour

We had a busy day up at the hill yesterday. At Home Number Two, we poured 100 cubic meters of concrete into the wood forms that will support the home. Since Japan (along with the rest of the world except America) uses the metric system, concrete quantities are in cubic meters. Yet, to conform with international standards (except for the US), concrete strengths are measured in Newtons. Regular everyday concrete has a strength of 21N, but for large structures such as this, 24N is the minimum. In kg per cm2 it goes like this. Everyday concrete apparently has a strength of 240kg/cm2 which converts to 3440lb/in2, making average concrete slightly stronger than US concrete at 3000lb/in2. In regard to slump, 18-21cm is the norm, for this foundation we ended up pouring 12cm. Quite stiff, even when thoroughly vibed.
The two meter boxes that make up the actual footing that the columns will sit on were poured first, followed by the grade beam that tied every single footing together. Something that really impressed me was the foundation company actually had a laborer follow the crew with a bucket of water and a brush and scrub any splashed concrete off of rebar that was waiting to be poured. In essence, any mess that was made on the first trip around with the pump was promptly cleaned up, so that concrete would stick to rebar in a portion of the foundation that was waiting to be poured during successive passes of the pump, or any any rebar in the columns that will be poured in conjunction with the second floor.
Everything went smooth, and the carpenters are back today removing forms and preparing the first floor slab, which is scheduled for a pour on Tuesday, the 13th of November.