DIY Concrete Floor for a House Addition (Complete Pouring and Finishing)

hey everybody in this video i'm going to show you how to do a diy concrete floor for a room edition now the homeowners wanted to add a like an entry room area onto their house so this is the room they're gonna add right here it's 16 by 16. they hired a concrete foundation contractor to come in and put a frost wall in and the reason they do that is because the house is also on a cross wall like this so we don't really want to do a like a monolithic slab connected to a house that has a frost wall typically we'll do a frost wall on a frost wall or frost while connected to a frost wall here in maine that way the frost goes down about four feet here in maine so in the winters we get a lot of freezing thaw cycles and we just want to make sure that nothing moves you know when the these two buildings are attached together the roof lines are attached it's just less likely something's gonna move if they're both on the same type of foundation so we're pouring the floor we got four inches of concrete going in here on top of styrofoam i'm using my regular 3500 psi mix with the water reducer in it the fiber mesh in it for reinforcement you don't really need wire mesh in something like this i mean the floor is all locked in on all four sides by the foundation the concrete foundation you got really good you got almo just about a hundred percent compaction on the subgrade so it's not going to settle it's going to be heated so it's not going to heat and the fiber mesh is perfectly good enough for any type of reinforcement to help with shrinkage cracks like that so don't really need wire mesh or rebar in a small floor like this when it's inside a foundation we use fiber mesh in all our pores sometimes we'll have wire and rebar in some of our slabs but most of our floors that are inside foundations like this we just use the fiber mesh we don't have any problems with it we've been pouring with it like that for years and years the tea is magging the edges right even with the top of the wall that's what we're gonna use to screed by luke and i are just pouring this thing out we got about four yards of concrete on the truck that's pretty close to the minimum for them they don't usually charge us a minimum load charge you know regular contractors that poll with them every day they're pretty good about not getting you for a minimum load charge uh if you don't pull with them much then they're gonna they're gonna hit you with that and that's gonna be different for each company so if you're pouring something small like this you just wanna check with them and see how much more they're gonna add on for that we're probably pouring around a six and a half seven slump here today and we can do that with the water reducer in the in the mix we could pour up to an eight if we if we want to really and that doesn't take take away from the strength of the concrete using the water reducer where we pour concrete every day we like to make the pouring process as easy as possible for us so and i would you know if you're doing this yourself i would recommend you ask for it too and then you can pour a little bit looser slump and not really worry about hurting the concrete though [Music] all right we're going to leave just a small section of that unfilled in case we're a little bit high we can pull it into that that section we didn't fill up we'll finish getting all our edges mag first we like mag floating our edges first before we screed it's just something we've always done just it's a little bit neater easier to screed for us and you gotta mag float em anyway so you might as well might as well just do it first before you screed that section we have a 14 foot magnesium screed that we use i don't have a 16 footer so we're gonna run the edge of the screed board off the section that we mag floated now if you had a longer one you could just go right off the top of the concrete wall if you wanted to but we don't really need we screed every day we can just screed right off our mag wet pad just as easy [Music] we're kick screen here so as we as we screed backwards we're kicking in the concrete where we move our foot and that allows us just to keep going without having to stop too much now if we get low like we are right here we gotta start and push some up and then we can continue screaming if you want to learn how to pour and finish concrete like we do we do all sorts of uh concrete work i have a private membership called the concrete underground down in the description below you know click on the little show more section and uh up pops up all kinds of links to the concrete courses i have stamp courses slab courses but the private membership is where i train people how to do concrete just like i do so you can check that out if you let's want how luke's magging that edge nice and smooth making sure he's filling in all the little rock holes and stuff that that plays a big part in how easy this is to finish you know if you got all kinds of stuff that are rough and uh not completely magged out well then the finishing process is a little more difficult the next part that makes finishing a lot easier is the bowl floating if you can both float this really nice and smooth and fill everything in all the little aggregate all the little lines from the screed then when you come to finish this like you'll see here in a few minutes it's going gonna make that process a lot easier so getting it both loaded nice and smooth without leaving any big lines is uh is a key to finishing this thing a lot easier also having that bull float with the rounded edges on each end leaves a little less of a line than if you have one with square edges you can see how that's barely leaving any lines at all as t is both floating at [Music] nice and smooth there's a line there on the right see that she'll take that back out as she as she both floats that last section where the street is that line will come right out of there you know you've got it screeded nice and level and smooth if you don't have to fill in any areas under the bull float i see a lot of people having to go back and throw concrete in under the bull float just to fill in a section well that means you're either digging in too much in that area or maybe you're riding high with the screen you've got a hump in there you want to make sure when you screed that you get it nice and level the first time that's usually the best we see how that both floats smoothing that out really really well where we finished up right there key is gonna go back and take out her what we call her bowflow lines where she picks the bullfloat up that leaves a tiny little bit of a line so if you smooth that out now it just makes finishing a lot easier so we're about 30 minutes after we just got done pouring this it's probably 80 degrees in the sun on styrofoam and the way to check that to see if it's ready is when pressing in there i can still press in about 3 8 of an inch still a little bit squishy but it's getting close to being ready to mag just going to finish this one by hand we don't want to wait too long but we'll probably give it another few minutes before we get out on it we'll get our edges all mag since we can reach those that's what it looks like under the mag now we're just gonna mag and hand trial this a couple times and get it nice and smooth we don't usually put a power trial on stuff this small it's just as easy for us to finish it by hand than it is i got a power trial right in the truck but it's pretty small area to be running a power trial on especially if you you know if you're pretty good at hand troweling then this is just as easy especially using those metal skids i got right there that slide right on top of the concrete if you guys i'll have a link for those down in the description if you want to check them out if you don't use those for finishing i uh i'm willing to bet that after you get them and try them you'll use them all the time for finishing definitely easier than using some type of board or styrofoam to to finish by hand with so i'm going around we've already magged the edges once so tia and luca hand trowel on the edges and i'm mag floating the inside of this getting it nice and smooth bringing up the cream and it's pretty hot out here today so as soon as i get it mag floated i'm going to go right back around and hit it with a hand trial too to get it trialled the first time and then we're gonna let it sit for a little while and then we're gonna hand trial it again and you'll see how smooth this comes out after just two passes with a hand trowel like i showed you just a little bit earlier the key is just getting on and at the right time that's what's going to make this part easy or hard if you get on it too late then mag float is going to be really really hard by hand [Applause] we're actually coming from another job we did already this morning we poured a a big house and we left two guys on that to finish and then this is the second floor of the day that's why we're all together here in one truck so we're just getting this second job done today and that'll be it for today after this [Applause] when concrete's on styrofoam like this out in the sun and it's 80 degrees it it starts taking off pretty quick so there's not much time to wait when you start finishing it's just that initial weight after you get done pouring the concrete like i said before we waited about 30 minutes and then we got our edges magged and then probably another five or ten minutes and i jumped right on it right here with these knee boards so it wasn't long after the pour here where it's so hot and then after it starts going like this it it takes right off so you're gonna want to stay right on it we're gonna give it once i you can see i'm hand trialling it now for the first time and that's pretty easy right after you mag float if you go right back over it with a hand trowel you can uh you can move right along pretty quick get it pretty smooth then you're gonna give it probably give it a few minutes to let it set up a little bit more like we're gonna and then uh hand trowel it again it's gonna be really nice and smooth you could leave it like that if you want you could just leave it hand troweled finish put a sealer on it and it would be a pretty nice looking floor that way i think most people on these room additions like this they'll tile them or put indoor outdoor carpet on it or something some type of linoleum flooring over the top of the concrete where i'd be more apt to just leave the concrete finished you could uh either stain it seal it you could polish it you could even do an epoxy coating over it it would be better than putting some other type of flooring over it you can see how easy it is using those kneeboard skid type type things they just slide right on the surface as you push yourself backwards and then you can just keep going without having to stop really so that's mag floated and hand crowd once so we've actually i call it hitting the floor we've hit the floor twice now by hand and we're going to hit it one more time here you just watch this we gave the surface 20 minutes to set up a little bit more so it's harder now now luke's going to go over it and because the surface is harder it's going to be smoother when he goes over with a hand trowel this time now you could go over the third time if you really wanted to but you can see how smooth that's getting it we don't need to go over it a third time he's just gonna hit it this time and i'll get you a close-up here at the end you'll see how nice and smooth this came out [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] now luke's gonna finish up right there and then he's going to jump off and then he'll trowel out underneath the skids and that'll be the finished child surface right there i'm going to get you a little bit of a close-up here right at the end you can see just how smooth this came out now like i said now you can decide what you want to do over the top of it for flooring or you could just leave it a concrete floor finish build your room addition and you've got a finished floor right there as a concrete floor the key with trialing is just not leaving any lines you know knowing that the angle the to hold it at and how to move it back and forth without leaving lines but there's the smooth surface thanks for watching guys we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 21,438

Rating: 4.9523811 out of 5

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, how to, 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 concrete steps, how to form concrete stairs, pouring concrete, finishing concrete

Id: LNZFE5Qlhg0

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021