Concrete pad for beginners // DIY

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to my backyard on this beautiful Saskatchewan fall day where it is shorts today freezing tonight and Bunny hug tomorrow anyway today we're going to be doing a concrete project and as you can see I've already got a bit of a head start now the first thing I had to do was obviously had to get the stairs out of my way so I yanked them off and I set them to the side then I dug my patio stones up and repurposed them over in the other part of the yard because apparently we might be getting a third bin from the city so you need room over there then I made my form now this is nothing more app than some two by fours that I cut and screwed together the only thing I will say about this is make sure when you're doing it the inside of your form is the size of the slab you want to make not the outside remember that I've seen that mistake made it is way too easy to make [Applause] then I just made some steaks out of some scrap one by two but you could also just buy them in the store I just had the leftover material now that you're all caught up we can start squaring up our form where we want it and removing dirt until we got a bit of oil we want the form to kind of sit down in there now I want my form to be about three quarters of an inch to an inch above the ground so I'm going to dig this down and the easiest way to do that honestly we're going to take a spade now we're going to Mark out around our form then we're going to take one of these Square shovels we're going to hold it down level flat with the ground and just start scraping smooth until we've got it down as far as we want foreign I ended up digging down and scraping out about two inches worth of material and then I dug a trough around the entire outside and this just allows the form to kind of sit down and get a little bit lower in relation to the ground where I wanted it to be and it also gives you some wiggle room to kind of lift up and push down in certain areas to make sure that you can get the form level once I knew that the form could be made level I went around and pounded in all my Stakes into each corner and I fastened the stakes to the form with the screw leveling as I went this just ensures that later on when you're pouring the concrete you can't knock the form out of level this is going to be held into place I also added one stake into the center on each side just to make sure that it didn't get pushed out with the weight of the concrete later on now we need a base for our concrete I'm just going to use this crushed natural rock here I got this from a local Landscape Supply Center they charge two bucks a bucket you bring your own you fill them up so it's pretty cheap and we're just going to rake in a thin layer over the entire bottom side of the form and you don't really need to build up a whole lot of thickness just enough to cover the dirt and just ensure there's no lumps anywhere in the rock now for reinforcement I just got this stuff right here it's just a four by eight sheet of a wire mesh squares are about four by four and you can find this in the hardware store in the concrete aisle in a lot of places but if you can't find anything like this you could use the wire mesh or just use rebar whatever you got available just as long as there has to be some kind of reinforcement in here don't skip it but you want your reinforcement to be about an inch inch and a half away from all the edges and with this we're just going to lay it straight on the Rocks that's good enough for this foreign now it's time for probably like the most fun but also the most work part of any concrete job and that's mixing the concrete now I've got this mixing tub here again I got this in the concrete aisle this is a two bag mixing tub you're going to want to definitely start and mix one bag at a time I usually mix my first bag pretty soupy just to make it easier to mix because once you add the second bag in it's going to absorb a lot of the water from the first one then you just kind of Add Water intermittently until you get it to a pancake batter oatmeal batter type consistency somewhere in there come here before we add our concrete to the form we're going to rinse the entire thing off this washes all the dust off of the rocks and the wood and everything and helps the concrete stick to the rocks and kind of get down in there and bond to everything as well as help the form slip off later then we can just add the concrete to the form now normally I would suggest using a shovel but my brother is like why don't we just dump the dump the bucket in there so that's what we did but I will stress though it it is heavy like it's 132 pounds of concrete it's not light so if you're not confident in it don't do it just grab a shovel and just start scooping it out that is the easiest and safest way to do it foreign after a few bags the form is starting to get pretty full now we can start screeding everything off so we're just going to use a straight 2x4 and go back and forth across the form in a solid motion this will bring out the cream and knock down any high spots you'll also go back and add some concrete and fill in any low spots as you go and then just keep working your way all the way to the end and screed it right off until everything is nice and flat foreign it's been about 40 minutes now since we poured the slab and most of the water has evaporated off of it now and it's just starting to firm up a little bit and this is where we want to hit it and start finishing it out so I've just got a steel trowel here and I've got a concrete edging tool and we're just going to go around and hit the entire thing and start to prep it out all right now when you're edging this guy your first pass you're going to kind of want to just come hug the board ever so slightly and just sort of cut a line and once you've got it done you see here I'm going to pick up this Leading Edge and a push down ever so slightly with the back Edge and that's going to start to smooth this out and cut my line then I'm just going to rock it back and forth go back the other way rock it back the other way and just sort of Trail the back end and lift off and now this is just going to be a first pass we'll come back and we'll do another pass here ah it's probably about an hour and a half mark or so and that'll be more of a refining pass this is just sort of making sure that we have our line cut in and we're just going to take our trowel and just blend it all in not pushing very hard at all just sort of letting the weight of the trowel do the work and don't worry at all if you have some lines those are going to come out in the next step while I was waiting for the concrete to set up further I had a little visitor come and join me that was amazed Slade let him be he didn't chase him off so anyway we're at about the three hour mark now since we poured the slab and now that the slab has firmed up quite a bit more we're going to come back and repeat the same steps but because it is firmer this is going to be more of a refinement step and you're going to notice it's going to come out a lot smoother after letting the concrete set up a little bit more we're at the five hour mark now and this timing is going to change drastically depending on if you're pouring this in the middle of summer and it's hot out or if you're using a high early bag mix of concrete that firms up a little bit faster you may be doing this at around the three hour mark but the way to test that is to come out and push your finger into the concrete lightly if you don't leave a fingerprint then you know you're at a good time to broom the entire finish now this is just a small little concrete broom again that I got in the concrete aisle and I'm going to brush the entire finish this adds a little bit of an anti-slip finish to it so it's not slick when it rains but it also is a little bit aesthetic too now if you do this too early you will remove the cream layers so make sure to kind of test it as you go and don't brush too hard because it is still soft if you brush too hard you will peel it up but just brush the entire thing over and then let her sit 24 hours total time and we can remove the form now the stakes however are a little trickier to get out of the ground but a nice little tip use the claw end of a hammer and smack them a few times eventually the claws will hook into the stake and you can pull them right out of the ground [Applause] all right it's been a couple hours since we took the form off the slab and it has really started to dry out now now that the sides are allowed to breathe really really starting to mattify itself now in the Finish now when you think about curing it a couple things you can water cure the slabs that's just literally taking with soft water just lightly flowing out of your hose flood the entire slab every six to eight hours or so for the next couple of days that'll prevent any bad things happening from the concrete the sealer however is going to keep the top layer looking good for a long time it protects the cream layer from cracking and peeling up and it also protect it from staining and discoloration I however have got this stuff here it's made by Quikrete you can find it in the concrete all with everything else it's a curing seal we're just going to apply it with a four inch little paint roller and this will allow me to skip the watering step and it's an acrylic sealer at the exact same time so it's two in one step now it's got to get done as you can see the sealer goes quite a long way foreign [Music] well everybody that is it it is a nice small but simple concrete pad just anybody can pretty much make this just make sure you got a little bit of Grunt and muscle to do it or maybe a little electric cement mixer the process is fairly simple but it is a lot of work so I hope you guys like that video oh channel news I'm going to be working on my website here coming up I'm also going to be working on a merch store so keep an eye out for those and on the website I'm also going to be going back and making plans for a bunch of projects that I've already done so those will slowly get uploaded to the website as well and there's going to be a bunch more stuff coming out so this is going to be happening over the next few months so keep an eye out for that otherwise I hope you guys like this one and until next time thanks for watching

Channel: Jesse does DIY

Views: 1,053,319

Keywords: diy, how to, beginner, instruction, rustic, tutorial, concrete, cement, pad, pour, pour a concrete pad, small concrete pad, concrete pad, concrete slab, slab, form, finishing, finishing concrete, finishing cement

Id: 2e-Qdy4W7Jg

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2022