The 9th Rebuilding Together with Christmas in April Project was held on Saturday, April 28, 2002. Approximately 2100 volunteers armed with paintbrushes and power tools swarmed into 13 Providence neighborhoods and renovated 21 homes and 12 nonprofit properties.
Skilled carpenters, builders, and electricians combined with college students, police cadets and construction company employees put donated materials to work helping low-income homeowners, the elderly and the disabled.

As in prior years, PRM Concrete donated materials to many sites. However this year, Jane Upper, Executive Director of Rebuilding Together, called us with a unique problem. One of the scheduled projects was to "spruce up" the playground at the Holy Ghost School in Providence's Federal Hill section. However, in the center of the existing playground was an abandoned reflecting pool. The proposed plan was to transform this area into a meditation garden.

The plan was to fill the pool to within 12" of the rim with pervious type gravel; compact the material and then place a covering of loam that would support plants. That's when Nick Squeo, PRM's quality control guru was called in. Nick went to the site and found that the area had been fenced in with only a 3' access gate making it impossible to get a dump truck into the site. This meant the whole load of gravel would have to be placed with wheelbarrows.

Instead, Nick proposed filling the pool with fillcrete also known as flowable fill. Flowable fill is delivered in a ready-mix concrete truck; self-compacts; doesn't form voids; and is not labor intensive--as you can see from these pictures (That's Nick donating his labor for a worthy cause). The fillcrete was delivered prior to April 27 and was ready for the volunteers to work their magic.

Once again, PRM's Quality Control Division found the correct product for a unique situation. Let us put this expertise to work for you.