DIY Concrete Floor Pour - Who's Teaching You This? I AM!

hey everybody so who's teaching you this anyway well I am I'm teaching you this stuff I'm trying to educate the people who want to learn how to do concrete on how to do it and this is where you're going to learn so I've got a private membership called the concrete underground inside there I have all my training videos and this is something similar to what you're going to see in there if you want to learn how to do your own concrete floor now this is a garage floor it's got a 4T Frost wall around it because we live in Maine a lot of people when they build new structures they'll put a frost wall in the ground those walls go not only are they about a foot above the ground they're 4T below the ground That's How Deep The Frost gets here in Maine so we put concrete down below the ground 4 feet so the frost doesn't play with the slab at all and then we'll pour concrete floor right inside it so if you're thinking of doing this yourself if this if you're thinking of a DIY concrete FL floor do it yourself concrete floor this is going to be something very similar as as the way you'd attack it right here now what we're doing is we don't do the excavation so the dirt work was done you know the people come in they do the concrete foundation then the excavator shows up and he backs F he back fills it with gravel compacts it as he goes and then when we show up it looks like this so we're subcontracted on this job to do the 6 mil poly the wire mesh and then pour and finish the concrete floor now this is this video is going to be about pouring the concrete but you're getting to see a little bit of prep here in advance so it's about 6:00 in the morning right now 6:00 a.m. it's uh it's a early spring day here in Maine still a little chilly out but we get we get here early concrete's for 7:00 so we'll get here at 6:00 and we put up our garage form boards so the two boards and front of the garage doors you see there we just uh shot a grade with our laser and see the laser over there on the right so we shoot a grades with our laser we we go 4 in above the dirt grade and we make these marks on the concrete we call them top of slab and then we'll just tap con we'll we'll drill into the concrete and then when we'll screw right through into the boards through into the concrete to hold the boards on and we'll do that with all the door openings so those those kinds of things I teach you and show you how to do all that in the concrete underground so the next thing we do is we call the concrete company you know we'll we'll figure the concrete if this is let's say it's 24t by 24t so 576 Square ft but the easy formula I have is uh for dividing that by 80 and so three 57 76 and I always use the outside dimensions so I have a little bit of extra concrete 576 divided by 80 equals 7.2 yards of concrete if it's exactly 4 in thick now what we find is nothing is ever exactly it's usually up and down a little bit you know if it's if it's up and down a half inch you know if it's 4 and 1/2 in to 3 and 1/2 in with an average of 4 in that's that's usually considered pretty good up here in Maine for the excavators in our area um but we usually always add extra so if I if I got to 7.2 on a on an exact measurement like this I would just order eight yards of concrete and then I know I'm not going to run out cuz if I run out I may not get any more it depends how busy the concrete company is you can't just count on them sending you another truck if you run out you may have to wait for one to come back that could be two hours so I'm I'd rather waste a little bit of concrete then have to worry about running out and ordering more so we'll call the concrete company we'll give them the date we want to pour we'll tell them what time we always like to start early so the day of the pour the concrete truck shows up we tell them to mix it up to about a 6 in slump we use a 3500 PSI floor mix we have microfiber mesh in the concrete even if we have the wire mesh in here we still use the microfiber mesh I asked for a mid-range water reducer so I can pour about a six or a six and half in slump which is about what you see us pouring right now and then for us in Maine because this garage may or may not be heated we don't know that I ask for a low air entrainment so it has a little bit of air entrainment in the concrete and that just helps with freezing th if if water gets into the concrete in the winter time and then it freezes the little microscopic air bubbles inside the concrete help give the place for the water to expand when it freezes and the concrete and not pop the surface off and cause you know scaling and peeling and stuff like that so we'll back the truck up we'll have him mix up to the slump we want in this one we had to hook on a Little Chute to get it to that back wall that's our little Shute extension you can buy those you know at at places uh concrete supply stores you know like deocr Supply or White Cap if you really need one if you pour like every day like we do you're going to want need one but if this is just the only floor you're pouring right here then you may be able to just you know if it's too far to that back wall you think just to pull it you may just wheelbarrow a little bit to the back and then pour the rest out of the choot like we're doing here so what you can't see too good in the video is we have a blue line snapped on the inside of that concrete wall right at top of floor grade and that's kind of what we're using as our as our grade to eyeball the concrete to as we're pouring out the concrete so Darren and Luke have the two concrete come alongs in their hands I'm holding the shoot with the wire hooked there pulling up the wire as we go and as Darren and Luke are kind of kind of leveling out the concrete here with the Cal alongs you know they're using that blue chalk line to go by nothing really to go by in the middle they're just eyeing it the best they can in the middle right now what we'll do is we'll use the laser here in a minute once we get enough concrete poured out we'll use a laser and set what we call a wet pad in the middle to floor grade and use that to screet off from but first of all what we like to do is you know because we do this every day and we're really experienced we like to pour out almost the whole garage floor just leave a little what we call a little hole in a corner in case we're High we can pull that high into the area that we don't have Concrete in but we like to get it almost all poured out before we start doing anything else sometimes like right now if one guy can break the concrete down that's what Luke's doing right now we call that breaking it down Darren will go back and he'll start magging the edges to the blue line and that just gets us a little bit further along uh when we get ready to screed we'll use that that smooth mag pad what he's doing right now to screet off from so Luke's going to continue kind of kind of leveling out the concrete I'll hold the shoot and run the concrete out of the shoot and pull the wire at the same time and we're going to continue pouring this out and Darren's going to mag the edges so this is basically where you start you get the concrete poured out you get something to work with and then and then you start getting your grades established before you screed now you could you could stop right here and get what we have poured out uh screed down and bull floated before you pour any more out if you wanted if if you feel like you're new to this and you don't want to dump this whole thing out because you're not quite sure what you're doing yet you're probably better off just pouring out a little bit at a time like do it in thirds versus do 90% of it like we do and then depending on how hot out it is you know on a cool day like this you're going to have a little bit more working time with the concrete versus if it's 90 out and sunny then then you're not going to have much work time you're really going to have to hustle you may want to ask if if it's really that hot out you may want to ask for a chemical in the concrete that slows down the set time it's a retardant it's called and it slows the set time down gives you more work and time with it uh personally we never have to use that we're always fast enough to get the concrete down in plenty of time no matter how hot it is out where we live here so Luke does a pretty good job of breaking that concrete down and getting it close to grade you know he he's got a good eye for the level of the concrete how thick it needs to be this this subgrade the gravel grade was graded pretty good so trying to get everything at 4 in thick is isn't as hard as you quite think it might be if you've done it a little bit then you start getting the hang of it just got to watch that wire Luke almost tripped on the wire you can see how I'm not really slowing down waiting for Luke because I'm pouring as I pour the concrete out and move the truck ahead I'm getting it fairly close to grade anyway I'm not like letting it build up too high or getting it too low all Luke really needs to do is kind of just pull it back and forth a little bit to level it out and that's something you don't want to do if you're pouring it right out of the shoot you just don't want to pour out a big huge pile in one spot and then try to have to pull it around you want to you want to keep that shoot moving keep the flow of the concrete going slow and steady and then you know let the guy that's raking the concrete out like Luke is not have to work too hard but just just steady enough so you get the concrete poured out in a timely manner so this is what I mean by getting about 90% of it poured out and leaving that we call that a hole but just leaving that uh empty space there at the end in case we're high up up in the first part we can pull that high right into that spot where we don't have any concrete then we won't have to shovel it outside so as Darren continues to mag the edges around the outside perimeter I'm going to take the laser now with the receiver on it and I'm going to make a pad in the middle the same level as what Darren's magging the edges to and then that's going to give us something to go by in the middle there's a lot of ways you can do this this is just the way we like to do it um so this is kind of like the way I teach it it's it's always nice to have a laser and make sure what I like about having a laser is I know that our pads are perfect every single time you know perfect to within whatever the Laser's tolerance is and usually at at this close a level a distance the Tolerance on that L laser is really really finicky so you get a really nice uh grade set versus if you're like two or 300 feet away from the laser now if I remember right this floor slopes a little bit from the back towards the front so about 2 in from the back to the front so that means the back is higher than the front so when the when the cars drive in here and let's say they're wet or whatever and they're dripping on the concrete the water is going to have a tendency to run towards the doors and out the doors versus just puddle up under the cars and this is how we do most of our garage floors like this and it's not really any any harder to to put a slope in the garage like this as it is to Port flat you just need to set your grades that way a concrete's not going to run or sag or anything with only a 2-in slope in a garage like this it's basically the same feeling in the concrete as pouring it flat as it is with a slope so Darren's got all the outside edges you can see how nice and smooth those are to go by now uh Luke and I are just finishing up the front getting our grve established in the front we like to set the forms the the door forms right the floor grade so we can use them to eye the concrete off from we can use them to screet off from and it also makes it easier to finish the concrete off from later on when you're power tring and this is what I mean by striking our pad so we got our screed you could use a nice straight 2x4 here if you're only doing this once and Luke is now using the pad I set with a laser as a to go by while Darren's using the outside pads that he maged and we screed that area nice and flat and smooth right there it actually has a little bit of a slope to it from the back to the front but as you can see what I mean by flat so now we can use that screed that area that's nice and smoothed off by the screed to go by to get the rest of the concrete screed or rotted or whatever you want to call it we call it screeing as Darren and Luke are working together with the screed you know I'm there with a calong just raking the concrete I'm pulling it back a little bit if they're high I'll push it up a little bit if they're low and you probably won't be able to kick screed like we are but you could you could stand there and pull the screed you know two three four times and then stop set back pull it two or three or four times stop set back and basically get the same result we are just not quite as fast as what we're doing it takes a little bit of practice to be able to kick your feet and screet at the same time and the reason we do it is you can see we're pretty fast at it and the reason we're kicking our feet like that is we're just as we pull a boot out we're kicking concrete back into where we just pulled our boot out to replace that concrete and that way there won't be a little hole there or divot as we scre over it now if they get them guys feel like they're low they'll stop for a second and they'll wait for me to push some up and then they'll get going again and they'll just keep screeing as long as I'm raking the concrete to the right level they'll keep screeing until they run out of pad to screet off from you see it doesn't really take that long to screed half of a garage floor like that literally just a couple minutes when you know what you're doing when you when you know how to attack it and when you know what to go by now what we're doing here is we're going to we're going to just check that form make sure that form board doesn't have a dip or hump in it by running that screed right across the front of that garage door because worst thing in the world is to have your garage built with a garage door on it and have a big hump in the middle of it or a big dip in the middle of it you want it nice and flat across the bottom of that garage door so the rubber on the bottom of the door seat swell to the concrete you can see how we're when we Rod the concrete like that the very edge of the screed is leaving like a little bit of line in in the concrete to make sure and we call that scoring so if he's leaving that line then he knows he's scored on the pad talking about Darren and me really and you should have a nice even line along the whole area of the part you've screed and that means that that part of the floor is now screed off correctly if you don't see that line then you're either too high or if you see a really really deep line like more than an eighth of an inch then you've probably dug into the concrete a little too much and you need to stop set back fill that in and go back over it again yeah so there's like basically 3/4 of the garage floor uh poured out and screed so that's most of the work done right there really and you can see that wasn't really too bad now I'm going to go grab the bow float the next step is to get the what you've screed B floated get it smooth and then that's going to prepare you for the finishing process I've got all the finishing videos inside the concrete underground to teach you how to you know either finish something like this by hand or finish it with a power tr get it nice and smooth get your saw cuts in it for your control joints I teach you all that that stuff so I'm running a Bull Float over it that bu float is 4 feet wide it's got the rounded edges on it I like the ones with the rounded edges they tend to leave a little bit less of a line on each end when you're pushing it and pulling it back and then you can see I'm just going nice and slow I'm tipping the edge up a little bit in the direction I'm I'm going either if I'm pulling it back or if I'm pushing it forward the edge of it wants to be tipped up just a little bit so it doesn't dig in and that bu Lo is basically consolidating the aggregate at the surface it's pushing down the Rocks a little bit which at the same time brings up a little bit of cream and a little bit of paste and it Smooths the concrete out really nice gives you a really nice surface to finish now with a slump like this basically a 6-in slump when you B float you basically just need to push it down and pull it back once sometimes you'll have to go over the same area twice but usually never never more than twice and it's nice and smooth Darren and Luca just finishing up the screeding they're just putting a little bit of extra Concrete in you can see how that turned out pretty good we didn't really have to shovel any out you're not going to have a big ugly pile of concrete on the outside of your garage floor because you dump too much concrete in there you know don't let the concrete truck driver hurry you sometimes them guys tend to be in a hurry if if they seem like you don't know what you're doing they just want to dump the concrete out and get out of there that's not really how it works you bought the concrete you get a certain amount of time to get it dumped out and you know you don't want to make a mess doing it you can see I'm just going down and back and I'll I'll do this half of the garage if I had more handles I could go all the way across but I'll just do this half from this side then I'll go over on the other side do that other half makes it nice when you can reach The Bull Float reach it and Bull Float it from all from the outside then you can really screed everything before you Bull Float sometimes you got to stop from screeing because you can't reach it from the outside and you got to Bull Float from inside the floor and that happens th all the time on a lot of pores but usually on these smaller garages like this we can get it all from the outside now what they're going to do is they're going to go back and just double check this garage door and make sure that looks good run the street over it yep everything's nice and flat they're happy with it now they just can leave it and wait for me to Bull flat it so I'm walking around just getting all the edges Darren's going to end up you know magging the form boards here in front but as you continue to watch me bow float here this is basically the one of the easier types of floors you're going to do if you're looking to do a concrete floor by yourself now this could be a little bit smaller for your first one for sure um but this is the you're going to attack it the same way you're going to you're going to you know the concrete you're going to get the concrete truck backed up you're going to pour out what you feel comfortable with pouring out and then you're going to get your grades set on the outside get your grades set on the inside and then scre it off and both loo it the same way so uh if you're look into DIY a concrete floor and you're not really sure the steps to do it these are the steps right here they're they're pretty basic they're pretty simple at least uh us they are because you know we do it every day but if you watch this one and you watch some of my other videos You'll see we do the same process every time and then inside my training you know I go into either further details and further steps as the things to look out for and then you have access to me in there if you have a question we can email back and forth we can talk in the forums occasionally I even give my cell phone number out we can talk over the phone if you're really confused over something you're doing or if you really need some extra help but if you're going to DIY concrete you know I don't know who else is teaching you this stuff nobody that I know of is teaching it there's all kinds of other concrete guys on YouTube but no one no one's really teaching it the way I am and I teach all kinds of other things about concrete too you know how to stamp concrete obviously how to finish concrete do a broom finish on patios and pool decks and stuff like that uh how to repair concrete how to do aoxy codin there's all kinds of things that I like to teach people and if you need a mentor if you need some help if you need some one1 training you know just reach out to me send me an email uh you can look me up on Instagram everything about concrete uh you can find my Facebook page I got all kinds of stuff on there or you you look at my Tik Tok and just reach out to me you know direct message me if you need some help with something we'll figure out a way that we can help you but just finish this off and let me know down in the comments if you like these type of videos so what happens next is after we get it B floated we we wash up all the tools make sure everything's clean we get get the truck loaded back up and then we'll just leave one guy here had a power trial so he's going to sit around for a little bit on a day like today he might sit around for an hour he probably probably about 20 to 30 minutes before he starts tapering the garage doors down a little bit but probably an hour to 2 hours before he starts power triing and that's just the basic process when you pour and finish concrete floors oh yeah that was pretty easy 24 24 8 yards of concrete 4 in thick got fiber mesh in it 3500 PSI and that's about as easy as it gets for us right there just blow it right in get it screed both loaded now we'll just leave one guy he had a power trial you know we'd probably be done by noon 1:00 it's 7:30 in the morning right now so thanks for watching guys we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 5,913

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: 3Jkib6EFmgs

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024