CONCRETE SIDEWALK : FORMING, POURING AND FINISHING

hey everybody mike here with everythingaboutconcrete.com in this video i'm going to show you how to set up a concrete sidewalk and a concrete entry pad and i'm also going to show you how we pour it and how we finish it so you'll get to learn how to do all those three things forming pouring and finishing in this video hey if you if you guys don't know me my name is mike day i own days concrete floors incorporated that's my business and i also own everything about concrete.com and this youtube channel where i show and i teach you guys everything that that i know and what we do for work every day so if you like concrete if you like that kind of stuff go ahead down there and hit subscribe now so what we're doing is we're laying out the forms for this sidewalk coming out of this house it's about a five foot wide sidewalk and we're flaring it out right up there at the end to the width of the stairs so what we're doing is we're just screwing the boards together now these are just two by fours this is a four inch thick sidewalk and it has quite a bit of slope from the stairs down to where the driveway is going to be down here at this end there's probably at least 12 inches of slope in this thing so the first thing we do is you know we lay the forms out we get them screwed together to length and then we start pininum where we where we need to we can see me up there on the deck i'm looking i'm eyeing it from the hot from the door out to the way the driveway is going to be to make sure that it looks okay when you're walking out the door i mean that's what these people are going to have to look at every day they're going to want to look at something that's fairly straight when they walk out the door and not kind of kicked off to one side or the other so we're starting up on that one end by the stairs getting that drilled and pinned into the dirt and then we'll screw the forms of grade and then we'll get our other hand end down here screwed together so we can run a string and and pin the middle part so darren's getting that end screwed together i'm going to go up there i'll probably eye that one more time we're gonna get our width just right you know forming forming things when no one's there to lay it out for you you just gotta kind of do what you think is best what looks good to you and what you think would look good to the homeowner i mean in the end you want the homeowner happy so and if no one's around just to say this is where i want it and you just got to use your own judgment make your call so that's where it looks good to me a lot of times you know when we're in a job the excavator whoever does the earth work will lay things out and they'll have their wooden pins in where we need to put our forms but sometimes like this one right here there's just no one there to do anything so you just got to take it upon yourself make sure it's done right make sure it looks good because once that concrete's poured there's no way of changing it unless you rip it out and do it again this gravel was really packed hard too then pins went down in that dirt hard so we're getting the forms all straight you can see that white that white stuff i get up there by the stairs that's called iso strip or strip off it's just a piece of foam that we use when we don't want the concrete to bond to something or stick to it so we don't want the concrete to bond to those stairs in case something moves either the concrete moves because of freeze and thaw cycles or maybe the stairs move this that iso strip will keep them separated so we're just following the slope of the of the gravel it's whoever graded it did a really good job grading it so we're not putting a laser on this one the slope of the gravel to the driveway is what's going to be plenty like i said it slopes about 12 inches from those stairs to the driveway so there's no way water is going to ever sit on it now the girls are putting the wire to it and that's how we form up that sidewalk especially with a slope like that now if we wanted the sidewalk if it was more level and we only wanted to pitch it a little bit one way then we'd set up the laser but we didn't have to on this one well that wire is five feet wide and the sidewalk sidewalks five feet wide we don't want the wire touching the edges of the board so we're gonna cut about six inches of wire off so we got about three inches of clearance on each side of the board that's what the girls are doing now one of those girls the girl's cutting the y is my daughter and the other one is abby abby's her best friend they're both in college this is their summer job but it's a good summer job for them they do a good job too so once we get this sidewalk done we're going to go down around the other side of the house and we got a little entry pad i'll show you guys how we're going to pour that in a minute here we're going to show you how we pour the sidewalk now we had to use a chute extension to reach so we didn't pull the concrete or wheel barrel it and we're pouring this pretty dry this is probably because of the slope in the sidewalk you know it's probably around a four and a half inch slump something like that what that means that's a slump means how either dry or how wet the concrete is and for like a regular concrete floor we'll pour a six inch slump that's pretty pretty workable it's pretty loose but it's not too wet it's not going to damage the concrete so this slump is pretty dry because we don't want it to sag so it's probably around a four to a four and a half inch slump you can see darren and luke are up there starting with a straight edge from by the stairs we can just ride right on top of the forms on this one so this one's pretty easy you can see i'm straight edging that thing down well me and t is pulling the wire up i'll get that shoot out of there then we'll pour some more yeah abby and i are spreading it out darren and luke are straight edging it t is pulling up the wire it's nice to have some extra help in the summer usually it's just me darren and luke just three of us you can see when darren and luke straight edge that before they straight edge it they mag float the edges smooth it just helps it helps in during the finishing process when you do that it fills in the voids around the boards really good it brings up the cream around the edges it just makes for a better finish overall when you're done we almost got enough concrete in the sidewalk gotta get a little bit more that was about that's about 35 feet long if i remember 35 by 5 sidewalk we got about two to two and a half yards of concrete in there and then we got another small entryway we're gonna go to in a minute here i'll show you we're gonna end up putting a broom finish on that this thing we're gonna cut grooves in it and edge it so i mean stay tuned for that that that'll be coming up here real soon i'm going to show you how we finish this thing pouring is just part of the process luke's bowl floating it now getting getting all the cream up to the surface pushing the rocks down a little bit a good bull float person makes the finishing go a lot easier too so you want to be able to bull float without leaving too many deep lines or too many divots when you tilt the bull float up or down so his little entryway coming into that that double set of doors this is six foot by ten foot again we can screen right off the top of the forms here we set the forms right to grade this is this figure just under a yacht of concrete eight by ten by four inches figures exactly a yard so this is six by ten we got fiber mesh reinforcement in this concrete too and it's a it's a 4000 psi mix with air entrainment about five percent air everything we pour outside exterior here in maine has to have air in it because we go through so many freeze and thaw cycles all right we're gonna get that straight edged off then we'll get it both loaded then i'm going to show you how we finish this thing so that's the pouring tea is going to put a bullfloat on that she's just learning how to bowfloat both floating's really not too bad to learn it's pretty easy you can show somebody as long as they they listen and they do what you tell them to do both floating is not too bad now what she's doing now is when she picks the bull float up it leaves some lines there so she's just magging those lines out all right so we're starting the finishing process first thing we're doing is cutting in our edges and now i'm cutting the grooves apart so i'm putting one groove right where that thing flares out and then i'm gonna measure out about every six feet and put my other groove five or six feet so i'm just cutting them in by hand this way we use a straight edge to do this that's that groover is probably about an inch and a quarter deep and i'm laying out my other grooves so i'm just measuring every i think it was every five feet and i put a little mark in the concrete with my finger and then that's what i go by so if you get on this just right to cut those grooves in i mean it doesn't take much pressure down to cut them in you know you just kind of you can tap the concrete a little bit as you go to push the rocks down and then you run that groover back and forth a little bit to make the groove look nice and smooth and creamy smooth and then you just gotta wait a little bit before you mag it and broom it you can see how cutting though cutting those grooves in isn't too bad i'm just i'm going by that mark i left with my finger and then i'm stepping back to make sure it looks nice and straight and now what me and luca doing is we're magging the surface out we want to get a nice moist creamy surface before we broom mag out any little imperfections sometimes when you both float on a slope like this you can't get all the rock holes filled in very good without making the concrete sag too much so you got to be pretty careful bull floating which means when you go to mag you just want to make sure you mag everything out when you're broke so when you boom it it doesn't show any rockers or anything like that darren's running the boom we're just using a two foot broom today that's nice light broom it leaves a nice light broom finish what he's doing is every every time he pulls that broom or every other time he pulls it he he goes and washes it out and gets the paste out of the bristles if you don't get that paste out of the bristles it leaves these little concrete rolls behind this that just doesn't look good so we like to leave nice neat lines so when the homeowner gets home and sees it they uh you know the first impression is everything luke's putting the finish pass back on that groover we'll do the same with the edges so we'll give it kind of like a picture frame look so this is exactly how you do a concrete sidewalk you form it like we did you pour it and then this is how you finish it these are the basics of finishing concrete so if you're just learning i mean this is this is an important process for you to learn because you're going to broom finish a lot of concrete if you're going to do this as a business whether it's a pool deck a sidewalk a patio you know a driveway there's a lot of broom finished concrete out there i'm just touching up the edges with that with that really fine hand broom darren's using his uh margin trowel there to touch up some edges on that last groove we use those margin trials for everything now we're going to put the finish edger mark on it we like those little brass edgers they're about two and a half inches wide and the curved part down by the board is about three-eighths to a half inch down it gives it a really nice looking tooled edge there you guys that's the finished look for a sidewalk all right now we're going to finish this little entryway again darren's cutting in the edges first making sure they're all good and creamed up and no rock holes before we do the finishing this was probably he's cutting those edges in probably about 45 minutes after we got it poured the sun was shining on this i think it was about 60 to 65 degrees out so if it was hotter if it was 80 in the sun you'd be cutting them in a lot faster i'm going to cut one groove across there to help control any cracks there now we're going to do the final magnet and the brooming and then put the finished tool marks on it so again guys if you don't know me my name is mike day if you like concrete and all kinds of concrete finishes go ahead down there and hit subscribe if you want to learn how to do this stuff how to set up the slabs like this i've got a course down in the description you can check out where i teach you step by step how to do this kind of stuff there's also in that course there's also uh a couple garage slabs i'm showing you how to set up and pour and there's also a part where i show you how to run a power trial in the course so there's quite a bit to it go ahead down there and check it out if you want you know i'm getting that finishing broom on there we'll put the finished toolbox on it and we'll be all done with this one well that's it guys i appreciate you watching come come on back again it's mike day with everything about concrete.com you

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 1,206,496

Keywords: concrete, how to concrete, diy concrete, how to pour concrete, how to form concrete, concrete finishing techniques, concrete skills, concrete floor, concrete slab, stamped concrete, concrete tools, how to pour a concrete slab, how to pour a concrete floor, how to pour a concrete driveway, how to pour a concrete patio, how to build a concrete foundation, how to form concrete stairs, concrete sidewalk, concrete walkway, forming a concrete sidewalk, forming concrete

Id: SDeBDcFEDXQ

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2019