Beginners Concrete Sidewalk DIY (Part 1)

hey guys in today's video we're going to talk about how to pour a DIY or a beginner's concrete walkway [Music] or sidewalk whatever you guys call it we we typically call it a walkway up here so what we got is we got about a four foot wide walkway uh it's part of it's straight part of it's curved and to begin you know we just dug out some of the existing soil there you can see this is a new construction site dug out some of the existing soil put in about six inches of gravel and then formed it up we use two by eights for forms here and then we used also one by eight azac trim boards they're PVC boards because they so they Bend really good um so they're eight inches and then we put two inches of Styrofoam in here we live in Maine so we get a lot of freeze and thaw cycles and the styrofoam helps insulate the ground to prevent the the frosh from getting under the slab here and heaving it and cracking it so we typically put a lot of two inch styrofoam under exterior pores here in Maine and then you can see we tied them at a rebar in it that's number four rebar half inch and put some bricks under it to hold it up so you know if if there's ever going to be a beginner's type of walkway or a DIY type of walkway I guess this would be it something four feet wide something you can something you can ride the screed board right off the top of the forms um the only thing that might be a little easier if there was no curve to it if it was just straight but even with a curve if you're using those azact forms it's pretty easy to curve something with those and then you know we have these metal pins we use those are about 24 inches long you drive those metal pins down they hold really well they got holes through them so you can screw right through them or you could use Nails we like to use screws um and then that holds everything in place you know you can use a four foot level to set your level you can use the laser level to set your level it has a slight slope away from the building from one side to the other it's got about a half to three quarters of an inch slope and it's it's going to butt up into the driveway here right at the bottom of the video so pretty easy DIY walkway I think um some questions I get a lot about walkways are you know how thick should a concrete slab be for a walkway well this one this one's about five and a half to six inches thick so that's it's a little bit on the heavier side nothing wrong with that you could go four inches with a good sub base with a good gravel sub base especially if you're not in a freeze and thaw area four inches would be plutty enough for any type of sidewalk or walkway um if you get up in the north like we are then maybe you want to go a little bit heavier but pretty much four to six inches is plenty for a DIY sidewalk and another question do you need gravel under a walkway well so you need some type of soil that's not going to hold moisture so if it does freeze you know and then it's going to expand and heave so a good gravel road base Crush Rock even even crushed concrete aggregate something like that underneath the sidewalk is going to be what you want you don't typically want just sand under there that's that's really not a strong sub base it I mean it can pack pretty good when it's wet but when it's dry it tends to tends to be a little soft so some type of gravel or road base is the best thing to put underneath the sidewalk another question is you see a lot or I hear a lot is you know it's three inches enough for a walkway or a sidewalk well I mean three inches is definitely going to be enough for somebody to walk on it's going to be strong enough but it all depends you know what's under it I wouldn't recommend three inches we we never do them three inches four inches is the minimum we do and then five to six like this one uh is is pretty normal for up here in Maine or anywhere in the Northeast I guess so I would say no three inches isn't enough it will hold your weight but in the long term it's probably not going to hold up like you'd want it to another thing is uh what do you put under a concrete walkway well we just talked about that gravel road base Crush rock or you know uh basically those three things crushed concrete aggregate is another one if you can find it now now can you pour your own concrete walkway well if you're gonna watch a video like this and watch us how we do it I guess that's for you to decide do you think you can tackle something like this um if you're a little unsure I have I do have more training in the concrete underground where I have all my training videos and that's in a link down below if you want to really learn how to pour concrete like we do and how we finish it now you're going to get to watch us pour it here so we you know we obviously we we dump it out of the Chute we rake it around with the concrete rakes try to get it as even with the top of the forms as we can you're going to get to see us screed it and Bull Float it um it is it is quite a bit of work um if you do it every day like we do we don't consider this very hard actually it's on a scale of one to ten with with one being easy and 10 being hard I'd say for us this is probably about a two but if you've never done it you know you might consider it a eight nine or ten even so it all kind of depends on how handy you are if you how physical you are and stuff like that is if you can do it on your own or not and then you know what kind of experience do you have you have absolutely no experience I don't know you're going to want to do some research because you only really got one chance to do concrete right because once it gets hard if you don't like it you got to bust that out and do it over again you can't you can't really fix this concrete very easily so again if you need help just I'll have my link down in the description for you but you can check that out um if you have any questions you know leave your questions down in the comments I'll try to answer them the best I can if you're thinking of doing some type of walkway I'm going to show you this is part one part two I'll show you the type of finish we're doing but there's all kinds of finishes you can put on a walkway like this you know probably the easiest to do is just a simple broom finish cut some grooves in it some joints in it or the Joiner put your edger on it and then you know a light broom finish but there is a little bit of a trick to getting a really nice looking broom finish on these you can do a stamp concrete finish so you could you this you could color the concrete stamp it as you can see in the background there right that's me on the left mag floating The Edge but right in behind me those rubber mats is a stamp so that's really going to be part two of this you're going to see what kind of stamp we're going to do to this and how we stamp it and see if that's something you might want to tackle or you might not want to tackle on your own um I guess you could put like a MAG swirl finish on it or even a broom swirl finish there's there's different types of textures you can put on it you could stain it afterwards to get some color to it but those those are basically the types of finishes we normally do the walkways probably the most the one we do the most is just like a light broom finish was when we cut some joints in it and then the one with the second most popular one we do is some type of stamp you know an ashler slate uh cobblestone or a random rock type of pattern Fieldstone pattern those probably three of the most popular type of stamps we do but you can see how Luke and Darren are just grabbing onto the screed right now we got one long enough to overhang each Edge so they don't have to get in the concrete while they're screeding and we just we just run it across the top of the forums and I'm kind of raking down any High we'd rather rake back a little bit of high like this and so it kind of fills in any low spots then have to go back and shovel stuff back in because the concrete's low you'll see when I get The Bull Float in here shortly why why that's kind of important now Luke's changing screeds now going back to a little bit shorter one so because the gravel on the outsides kind of high there and that screed was hitting that gravel so that's probably a I don't know four foot eight screed those are magnesium screens too you could really if if you were just doing this one on your own you don't have to walk by a screed like that you can just use a 2x4 straight 2x4 will work plenty good enough for a screed and then I guess you know if you didn't have the rakes if this was just a one-time deal for you you could probably just get away with shovels for that one deal um we definitely like these rakes for concrete but The Bull Float you're probably going to want to have a Bull Float to get it nice and smooth and then those mag floats you see that thing hanging in our back pockets the really small one is a what we call a margin trowel and that's inside of a leather like a leather type holder for the margin trial and then we hang our mag floats those are magnesium floats too on top of that so we can just always have access to it and I guess you could probably mag float this whole thing after you get done screeding it without The Bull Float you if you want to it's just a little faster with a Bull Float I think for some of you guys if this is a if you're trying to do this on your own you could rent some of this stuff too see we got a little bit high in there but a couple shovelfuls we'll have to shovel out you see how they're pulling that back just a little bit of the time that way um it gets the the surface nice and level even though it slopes away from the building a little bit gets the surface nice and level no humps no dips in there and then you can see me in the background I'm starting to run The Bull Float over it now so when I Bull Float over it it makes bull floating really easy there's nothing I have to fill in afterwards I can just run that over it two or three times kind of pushes the aggregate down a little bit below the surface brings up some of that paste what we call a paste and it fills everything in really nice and smooth and that's what's going to make or it's going to help the finishing process make finishing a lot easier especially if you're stamping there's a little trick to that Bull Float you know as you push it out you got to make sure that front edge is tipped up so it doesn't dig in and then when you go to pull it back you've got to do just the opposite so the back doesn't dig in as I'm doing that Darren and Luke kind of finishing up that one little section I can't remember how long this was I think it was around 30 probably around 30 feet long or so like that 35 feet and then right there where Darren's standing right where his left boot is is the very end of it that's where his driveway will end up starting down the road so again if you think you're gonna do or try a DIY concrete walkway or concrete sidewalk you know let me know down in the comments if you if you think you can tackle something like this if you need help tackling something like this let me know down in the comments I'll leave a I'll pin a link for the concrete underground too in the comments you can check that out that would be a big help for you I think there's all kinds of training videos in there especially about finishing the concrete too timing when to finish you know it's a little trick to everything so again thanks for watching guys come on back and we'll see you on the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 39,275

Keywords: concrete, how to concrete, diy concrete, how to pour concrete, concrete finishing techniques, concrete floor, concrete slab, how to, concrete tools, how to pour a concrete slab, pouring concrete, Home improvement, remodeling, home building, homebuilding, do it yourself, diy, home improvement, pro tips, tips of the pros, how to make a sidewalk, diy sidewalk, how to pour a concrete sidewalk, lay concrete sidewalk, cement pour, mixing cement, make your own walkway

Id: YB1vmtRZ-cw

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023