"This hasn't happened for 2,000 years!" chortled Dr. P.K. Mehta. "It's historic. Not since the Greeks and Romans has such a massive placement of concrete been completed without a single crack. Not even a hairline fissure." Dr. Mehta's joy spread throughout Kauai's Hindu Monastery and the island. The 117' 6" by 56' by 4' foundation weighs over 4 million pounds and took exactly 108 cement trucks to place. Founder and Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, who had declared it must last 1,000 years, now knew that it would.
This pioneering project is made of a special mix that reduces Portland cement about 40% and replaces it with the pozzelon fly ash. Dr. Mehta notes that this makes a superior concrete, stronger, more durable, harder and even cheaper. It's adoption by nations and industries could radically reduce the greenhouse global warming problem, for which cement production worldwide is responsible for an astonishing 6%. The temple could, in time, change how things are built on the earth.
"We have been developing for the last 100 years a culture of much more haste and fast scheduling and profits. We are doing this with straightjacketed technology, made so autocratic that there's no freedom for human beings to think and innovate. We don't use our common sense at all. That what I'm fighting for, common sense. Kauai is going to show the way with this temple as a pioneering new concrete technology which is needed by the rest of the world."
"First I was asked in Canada to produce concrete that would last ten years. Then I was asked for 100 years, and now 1,000. I can't express my feelings on this. We can use high volume fly ash concrete in heavy construction, in dams and foundations. We are getting away from extremely ridged structures for we've found that the stronger the concrete in the beginning, the weaker it ended up. The old Roman concrete structures were weak, they moved under loads, and consequently have stood for 2,000 years."
He now estimates, after initial tests, that the slab will reach 6,000 psi within two to three years, double the engineer's requirement.
"I don't know any structure," Mehta told the local newspaper, "that is this size with 2,000 tons of concrete in it, without a single joint or single support or steel rebar in it."
A successful concrete foundation is more than a good mix design, and it became clear on the day of the placement how critical was the human element. After all, a design is useful only if all the concrete meets it. That's a stiff requirement for four million pounds of material handled by fifty men with dozens of machines responsible for loading, delivering, dumping, consolidating and finishing 1,000 yards of concrete from 108 delivery trucks. Everything about the concrete had to meet a specification, especially the water content. Should it rain upon the gravel pile the night before, this added water must be compensated for in the mix. And should that pile dry out by noon during the placement, again compensation must be made.
Hundreds of millions of pounds of this fly ash are generated each year on planet Earth. It has no purpose except to use in concrete.
