Whether you’re interested in building a DIY concrete slab for a shed, or you're pouring a concrete foundation for a house and hiring concrete slab foundation contractors, this video will get you prepared to build the best concrete slab foundation you possibly can! I’m gonna walk you through our concrete day on the wedding barn project and explain what’s happening, show you the concrete tools we’re using, and let you in on a few critical details that will hopefully help you succeed on your project. Thanks for watching!
There’s nothing more exciting than getting your project out of the ground. And today is that day! We’re pouring a Monolithic Concrete Slab Foundation, for an 8000 sq ft timber-framed wedding barn event center. By this point, you should have already completed all your prep work. You’ve installed your wood or steel form boards around the foundation perimeter. You’ve got your underslab plumbing and electrical installed and inspected. You’ve got your gravel, vapor barrier plastic sheeting, insulation, rebar and any floor drains and radon gas vents piped.
But chances are that you’ve still got a few loose ends to tie up! For instance, I’m adding a copper ground wire that ties into all the steel reinforcement embedded in the concrete. We’ve got a lot of bedrock around this site, and probably won’t be able to drive ground rods a full 8 feet deep, so having that extra grounding force will help big time. Fortunately, we poured the concrete footings first with a stiffer concrete mix so that it would support its own weight a little better and not put so much force on the steel formwork going around the perimeter. In which case, I was able to feed the #8 ground wire down through the concrete footing mix and out underneath the form to connect to the future electrical panel and ground rods. The next load going down is a wetter 4.5” slump that’s gonna be much easier to spread around and trowel finish.
Concrete crews like to start at the crack of dawn.
Concrete - Make sure you know how to calculate how much concrete you need. Concrete is measured in cubic yards. A yard is 3 ft long x 3 ft wide x 3 ft high. That’s 27 cubic feet.
It gets a little tricky in the turn down footing of a monolithic slab. You’ll need to measure the cross-section below the slab floor height and multiply by the lineal feet of the footing to get the cubic feet.
Pump Truck (if you have the space). A pump truck usually costs $175/hr on top of the concrete material costs
Mud Boots
Gloves
Hammer - it's important to vibrate the exposed edges of concrete along your formwork to encourage the concrete to settle into the voids and give you a completely solid wall with no pockets, or honeycombs.
Come-Along - (amzn.to/3w9IEoa) a concrete rake, called the come along is an invaluable tool. Push and pull concrete easily and get it flat as you rake it around from high spots to low spots. It also has a hook on one side that can be used to pick up the reinforcement wire so that it’s properly suspended within the top 1” of the concrete.
Mag Trowel (amzn.to/350mBEJ) - stiff magnesium float that pushes down gravel and bring the creamy cement/sand mix to the top to get a buttery smooth surface that’s easy to finish.
Laser Level (self-leveling) amzn.to/3v6R0M0
Screed - wood or aluminum - straight board that flattens concrete in between two known level points. (amzn.to/3pBPNLt)
The Vibrating screed -(amzn.to/3ipOGx3) is a tool that will save you a ton of time and energy kneeling down in the concrete with a regular wood or aluminum screed.
Bull Float - (amzn.to/2Sowt8v - 48" head + handles amzn.to/3wktpZy) one man can use this tool to start the rough finishing process. The bull float is a thick and rigid magnesium float that effectively pushes down the rock aggregate beneath the surface and brings the creamy cement and sand slurry to the surface to make it easy to get a slick finish.
Edger - (amzn.to/3goVPuG) creates a roundover edge that looks really good and won’t chip off like a sharp, squared-up corner after the formwork is removed.
Finishing trowels - (amzn.to/3zc1I7f) thin metal trowels are flexible and allow you to get a really smooth finish once the concrete has set up and feels like wet putty.
Finishing machine - (amzn.to/3isfLj0) power trowels are a critical tool on a large slab foundation
Control joint saw - (amzn.to/3gkOPiB) Two things are guaranteed with concrete: it WILL get hard; and eventually, it WILL CRACK. Control joints are a 1” deep cut in the slab floor that encourage those cracks to happen where you want them. You end up with less lightning-pattern spider cracking, and more decorative lines, or pattern cuts. The American Concrete Institute recommends spacing control joints no more than 3 times the thickness, in feet. Here we have a 4” thick slab, so when we multiply 4” x 3, we get a control joint spacing of 12 feet.
Негізгі бет Тәжірибелік нұсқаулар және стиль How to Pour a Monolithic Concrete Slab | the Skills and Concrete Finishing Tools you Need to Succeed
Пікірлер: 42