Beginners Concrete Sidewalk - Do It Yourself (Form, Pour, Finish)

hey guys mike here with everything about concrete so in this video i'm going to show you how we do a 20 foot by 4 foot concrete sidewalk so this is a pretty simple diy concrete sidewalk in my opinion so stay tuned for that i just want to say this video is being brought to you by the concrete underground the concrete underground is my private training academy if you want more advanced learning for concrete techniques like we do stamping slabs floors repair all that kinds of stuff is in the concrete underground also learning how to run a concrete business like i do check that link out in the description below so what we're doing is we're getting the forms up and we were shown exactly where this needs to go by the homeowner the homeowner is an engineer he's doing a lot of this prep work himself so he's the one that engineered the sidewalk and we're doing a bunch of little things like this on his property so when you see us pouring a little bit later in the video we poured actually like four different things here on the same day but right now darren and luke are just getting the forms up he wanted this sidewalk eight inches thick too so he's an engineer and he decided on the thickness so that's what we're giving him we're gonna get this boxed up again it's four four feet wide 20 feet long and this is just coming out the back door of his brand new garage he's building we're going to give this a broom finish too so i'm going to show you later in the video how we how we do our broom finishes on concrete but right now we just want to get the forms set in place get them staked we use those round metal pins they got holes through them so we can screw right through them those pound into the gravel really really good you can see this guy's got about a foot of gravel under this three-quarter inch crushed gravel he's got it compacted really nice so we're getting our grades set we're sloping this away from the building about an inch so about a quarter inch per foot on this one using i like using my topcon rl h5b laser it's a self-leveling laser i have a link for that down in the description too if you want to check that out but that's good for you know pouring things flat setting slopes whatever you need to do it'll do just about everything now the homeowner also wanted some expansion foam between the concrete foundation and the new sidewalk so we spray on a glue that's what abby's doing it's a 3m type of glue we spray right on and then the expansion foam will stick right to that in really just a few seconds and the expansion foam just allows the concrete to expand or contract not stick to the foundation so it won't cause any damage if it wants to do that now he also wanted us to drill and pin every two feet into the foundation so the frost wouldn't lift this and damage his door we live in the state of maine so we get freezing thaw weather from november to april so there's a potential here it could move um it's probably not going to because of the gravel he's got under this and the drainage he's got but we just want to ensure that this sidewalk doesn't lift at all and damage that door you can see we're right up under the door so we drill and pin in there with a half inch masonry bit and then we pound in some number four half inch rebar leave it sticking out about a foot and that'll keep the slab from ever lifting the bearings thrown in some wire mesh for some added reinforcement we're using a 4 000 psi concrete too with fiber mesh in it and it's got air entrainment the air entrainment just helps protect it during the freezing thought it allows water to get absorbed into the concrete and expand a little bit when it freezes those little tiny microscopic air bubbles in the concrete keep the surface from scaling and peeling and popping when the concrete does freeze see we're yanking up on the wire mesh as we go we're pouring a pretty dry slump here today for us we usually pour around to six but today's is around a four we just wanted to keep the concrete from sagging at all away from the building so we kept the concrete a little drier slump than we normally pour [Music] what tea is doing is she's using my dewalt pencil vibrator and just vibrating the edges so when we strip the forms the concrete will be really smooth no air pockets no rock holes or anything it'll be nice and smooth when we strip those forms abby's in the back there kind of mag floating the edges getting the edges nice and smooth while darren's magging the edges to the top of that expansion foam up against the building and we'll use those mag edges to screed from here in a minute like i said there's there's five of us here today but we poured a bunch of we poured four different things like this on this project all at the same time so we just moved from one side of the building to the other and we got everything poured we needed to today now i'm using about a five foot screed and i'm screeding from the outside that's how i leveled off this sidewalk let me know down in the comments how many of you guys are thinking of doing your own concrete sidewalk or patio a pool deck if you are then like i said in the beginning of the video that concrete underground is going to teach you i have all the training videos in there that will teach you how to do something like this so make sure you check that out it'll be well worth your time also if you're new to my channel i come out with a couple videos a week mondays and fridays about all kinds of different things we do with concrete so go ahead down there and hit subscribe now if you're not a subscriber yet and if you like these kinds of videos please hit that like button you can see how screeding off the top of your forms makes leveling the concrete really easy so whenever you set forms if there's a chance you can celebrate the grade like we did that's going to be your easiest option for screening everybody's going to move out front to one of the other pads we're pouring and i'm going to get this bowl floated get it smoothed out and we'll show you kind of how we finish this this project i'm going to run the bullfold lengthwise from one end to the other because if i run it the short way towards the building and pull it back it's gonna make the concrete sag a little bit more than if i run it this way i'm going nice and slow and i'm just going to run it down and back once and then i'll mag float out anything i need to smoothing it out even more we're using all marshalltown tools the bullflow the come alongs that luke has in his hand those concrete rakes are all marshall towns the mag floats we use are from marshalltown i have links for all those down in the description too guys if you want to check those out so this is about an hour to an hour and a half later concrete's set up enough so we're getting it now all mag floated out for the first time now it's not gonna be quite ready yet to put a broom on for us it's just a little too wet but we're getting it magged out for the first time bringing up some of the cream some of the paste filling in any little imperfections that the bowl float didn't get we also had to put a joint right there off the corner of that foundation just to make sure that if it was going to crack if the slab sidewalk's going to crack that it cracks right in that joint and that's the only joint the homeowner wanted he didn't want any other joints in this piece so darren and luke they'll get it all mag floated they'll get the edges edged for the first time and then they're gonna let it sit for a little bit longer before they mag floated again and put the broom finish on it so here it is about 30 minutes later you can see just half of it's in the sun now half of it's in the shade so it's drying a little differently in those areas but we're gonna mag float this again now that the surface has dried up some more and it's getting a lot tighter and that's gonna allow for a nice nice light broom finish on this we don't want the broom finish to be too rough it's just number one it doesn't look good it's hard to clean and it's not really necessary just need a little bit of texture on something like this so it's not slippery we don't normally steel trowel exterior concrete here in maine we'll mag float something twice that that's less likely to seal off the surface and trap in some of that air entrainment i was talking about earlier if you do ma if you do steal troll it even if you bloom it after you're still you still run the risk of trapping some air in there and that what that does is it it causes like a blister or a bubble under the surface that you can't really see and that ends up peeling and popping off later later on down the road so we'll mag something twice before we'll put a steel trowel to it or a fresno to it we just don't normally do that here in maine that broom is that we get that from marshalltown too that's i'll have a link for that down in the description we like that nice little two foot room for these smaller projects it leaves a really nice fine broom finish now when them guys get in the shade like that they'll just keep an eye on it and make sure that the texture looks the same as the texture in the sun because the sun part is going to dry a lot faster than that part in the shade and if it if it doesn't look the same then they'll wait a few minutes on the part in the shade and let it just dry up a little bit more you can see how darren cleans off the broom gets some of the paste off the bristles so it's it leaves a nice fine broom finish now luke's going to put the finishing touches on that joint with uh his hand groover darren's just touching up any little areas he couldn't get when the broom was on the handle under that door that door overhangs a couple inches so he was touching up under the door now he's going to finish it up with the with the edger there just going around the edges and giving it like a picture frame look but that's your basic diy concrete sidewalk um again check the link out in the description for the concrete underground if you want more training on learning how to do something like this also subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet thanks for watching and we'll see you on the next video guys

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 85,704

Keywords: how to pour a concrete sidewalk, concrete sidewalk diy, concrete sidewalk, concrete, diy concrete, concrete sidewalk for beginners, how to pour concrete, concrete for beginners, how to lay a concrete sidewalk, how to make a sidewalk, diy sidewalk, how to form concrete, concrete finishing techniques, make your own walkway, how to, how to pour a concrete slab, how to pour a concrete floor, how to pour a concrete driveway, how to pour a concrete patio, finishing concrete

Id: rO8gCS_i6M0

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020