How to Build a Wall and Pour in Place Concrete Caps For Wall

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi I'm David O'Dell with O'Dell complete concrete trying a new technique here where I'm gonna be in person on the screen while I'm going through this wall build what we have here is uh we're doing it's a little bit of a retaining wall it's on a radius just a little decorative front seat while you could say with a couple of columns so first of all we're gonna follow the existing radius of the sidewalk and the curb for the planter so we're just measuring three feet off of the actual curb so that's how we get our radius on this one so we have some points of reference so it makes it real easy we don't have to try to establish a radius it's already there so we're gonna go about a foot deep here and it's probably about four six inches below grade as well that way you can put dirt over the footing and then you can actually grow something on top of it all that irrigation in there the homeowner did that ahead of time so that's just there I'm gonna work around it and we have a drainage pipe that was installed by the Builder at this particular house that goes into the backyard there's some low voltage I believe that's what that is or maybe it's some sprinkler cam I'm not sure what but there's a lot of things laying around here but main priority here is the wall itself there's the actual footing and all those pipes you see there homeowner did that also as well the ones that were stubbed up those are for probably some sprinkler heads in the future after the build of the wall now those pipes sticking up there and then those little wood boxes that is going to be for the actual block columns on each side of the entry you noticed in the video I didn't really notice until I got in here but see the dirt right here me this is just shouldering here that's good I just walked in from a job site and I'm jumping right in on this video so here what we have we're gonna mix the concrete up by hand I'm using uh what am i using today I think I'm using some 4,500 psi I like the 4,500 psi because it goes off quick and it's a lot stronger than the basic premix bag so that's why I use this one you can actually put it in there set your block on there and it's gonna dry so that way you can go ahead and continue your build on these columns I'm not using just our basic 16-inch column block I'm using actually just 16-inch regular block and then I'm gonna it ends up being a 2 foot box let's see 16 is 622 you actually got a 22 inch square here I know I'm using the 8 inch block sorry about that these are 8 8 16 so it's a 24 inch square that's the beauty of the eights man it fits so nicely when you put stuff together those pipes digging up in the column that's one is irrigation one is drain is there gonna be a potted plant on here sitting on top of the column these columns will be about six to eight inches higher than the wall itself and they'll also be covered with some ledger stone it's some stone at the homeowner it's selected and he's gonna be installing that himself so we're not gonna be able to show that particular video however I will show you the poured in place concrete cap also I like to refer to it as a decorative bond beam and what that means is it's a horizontal chunk of concrete was stealing it that holds the entire wall together no I mean those are called for in a lot of specifications drawings and things of that nature but and that's usually hidden in the block in this case it's gonna be on top of the block and it's gonna be a decorative one so those little wooden boxes aren't real necessary if you buy the light fixtures ahead of time you can actually set the actual box of the light itself in the hall and put the concrete around it and then it eliminates this particular step of creating a box a wooden box that will have to come out then you have to dry pack your fixture in so it's much easier just set the box itself the homeowner elected to do this was a very energetic guy and he wants to do all this stuff specific way we have a little step up in the footing back here because of the grade that we're on so basically what we're doing is instead of having a course of block that you can't see we just step the footing up so when you're setting these blocks you'll notice every block is leveled just to verify that you're coming up plumb now if you notice on the head joints we uh butter up the ends of the block and then slap them together I've seen some people where they'll go ahead and leave the head joint out which is the mortar in between the blocks we'll leave that out and just do the horizontal one that this blocks actually stack on and then it'll come back with a grout bag and fill in the cracks I don't really like that system so I always like to put the head joints on the block and then slap them together so we would did here we just stabbed some number three rebar in here I mean this this wall starts at two feet and it gets down to about eight inches in the back so it's not a very high wall because of the slope here that we're on it will retain some of the front yard so we're gonna solid grout all these blocks then the homeowners gonna lay some stone on them most of Italy buried however in the backside so we may only have to come down eight inches in the back and then bury the rest and waterproof the back of that wall well here's what it looks like when you're all done with the block and you're pretty much ready to start grouting it solid your next step would be to let that dry overnight depending on what grouchy use I was used I always use just a 4500 when I mix my hand but in this case I'm gonna be pouring the backyard with the pump so I'm gonna drag the hose around the front just fill it up with the same mix that I'm using on the patio and what I'll do instead of coming right up to the top of this block I'll leave it recessed maybe a 2 inches something like that that way when I pour my poured in place cap on top of this wall it'll actually lock into the top block that means it can't go anywhere now here's some of the materials here that I'm gonna be using to set up the actual port in place cap they do make some styrofoam pre-shape styrofoam many different designs that you can actually some of them have a two-sided have tape where you peel it off and then you can actually stick the styrofoam right to the block or whatever your build-out may be like in this case I got an inch and a half build out to allow for the stone and then you can actually stick the styrofoam to this or in this case in this particular case I'm not using the styrofoam I try to stay away from that stuff if I can it's uh it's not reusable its expansive and it's very flimsy so you don't get really good straight edges from another word so I like to use wood whenever possible now on this if all this wood that I'm using even right down to the screws I reuse them I've reused these particular screws and there happen to be the blue screws or tap cons I reuse them multiple times some people will shoot it in with uh with a gun some of this stuff and blow your block apart some people nail them in with a hammer and blow your block apart but screws are the best because then you can take it pre-drill screw screw in there and then take the screw out reuse it and you have a very small hole in the block I got just enough material when I count this out on my wood that's why I'm cutting all these two by eights just right to fit so I don't believe I have any extra the way I've cut all of these let's see what did i do did i log-cabin it no no I just what I did here is I got two boards that are probably twenty-two and a half and then two boards are twenty-five and a half but I mean if you wanted to you could actually cut them all the same length just an inch and a half longer and you would still work each corner would be staggered so now I've got to clean off a little bit of the excess mortar on the sides of this block because I want to attach my plastic composite recycled stuff I'm just gonna drill that in again with some tap cons and this stuff's all reusable everything I use on this job the only thing that won't reuse what you're gonna see pretty soon is the actual siding I found some siding at Lowe's I believe it was just some 8-inch siding and it had its real flexible so I'm gonna use that it's four against and that'll attach to this plastic then I'm gonna screw into the wall so I had to double up my plastic bender board because it's only 3/4 inch thick each piece I'll double that up now to give me an inch and a half just like the two by fours now at the top of this plastic has to be really flush with your the top of block it can't be high it can't be low because what happens if it's any of those things when you go to strip this when the concrete's wet you could actually create a fracture in the concrete in the part that's can delivering over so you Porton to be really flush when you mount these boards on you know basically it all starts with the block though in any kind it always starts from the ground any particular build so if you're not plumb and level when you start on these blocks when you get to the top and start building these floors you're gonna run into a lot of trouble so fortunately the block was level and plumb and exactly where it had to be so all I had to do is follow the block now right here I had to make a little modification on the bottom of this board just to get my cap at full height without getting into that 2x4 that's mounted on there when that column so I needed enough space to finish underneath that column while the coffee was drying you'll see what I mean when we actually put the confit in here why I had to notch all that out right there now here's the sighting I was talking about I'm putting the wood grain this this sighting actually has like a woodgrain finish on it I'm gonna put that to the inside now I've actually seen you can actually use this as a finish itself with the wood grain you just pour it vibrate it pull the form and it looks like wood because you have that wood grain then you can actually add some dyes in there too and stain it really simulate some wood grain but in this case I just turned the wood grain in because it has a finished surface the concrete won't stick to it as easy now we had the other side of this this particular wood to the inside it sticks to the concrete and when you go to pull it when the card is wet you're gonna knock some chunks off of it now I'm making a four inch raised cap here pretty healthy hefty one and I'm gonna lay two number three rebar all the way around since this blocks level the level that I'm using is really not completely necessary I'm just verifying it even though I'm gonna go four inches up on both sides I'm just kind of fun to check it out with the level from kind of time so here's the rebar going in there's your siding that you probably see on a outside of a building more than more than likely I'm not in this particular case but I just use whatever whatever work so whatever is available so you can see how we recessed that initial grout a little bit down on everything that's so this cap will really lock in and before we start putting the concrete in here what I'll do is I'll wet the top of this block a little bit that way it'll actually adhere better to the block and it won't flash dry on me buys me a little more time on the finishing end of it so we got about we got close to 100 feet of can deliver that we will be stripping and finishing is you got both sides here typically as soon pulls about a hundred and ten feet of coping this right here was when you count both sides it's about a hundred feet you know also I'm gonna put some form oil on the inside of this wood so I wanted to come away real cleanly because like I said the better your prep is you know and on concrete work the more time you're gonna have to really get the kind of finish that you want you don't want to have to fight it you know at the end when the concrete is getting hard then you got four failures and this and that and a lot of things going on in your on a timeline with concrete you only got you know so much time to get it right because it's drying so you don't want extra things to do at the same time here's some wire mesh that the homeowner did we got back here and he threw that wire in there actually I had to take it out because I was all too close to the edges and was too high also he slipped in a little quarter inch piece of bender board on me and there on that outside face and it was sticking up into the concrete a little bit here and there's I had to use a razor knife cut that down that was a problem waiting to happen here's my standard mobile 100% synthetic so when you talk about synthetics like that you know that's 100% environmental friendly that's why they make it there's the rebar I just dropped it in exactly where I wanted it and then I just tapped down but you can see how that rebar is not really sinking there when we laying up on top of that concrete and it's very difficult to get down actually even in wet concrete so you got to kind of tap it down or it won't go down now here's filling up the wall cap here now this particular mix I'm using is also the 4,500 psi and I threw in some fiber mesh in here for every 5 bags which was a mixer fall the type of mixer that I'm using those are 60 pound bags I used a handful of fiber mesh and each little batch which is 560 pound bags I use the stealth fiber it's about three quarters of an inch long so it's barely visible and in this case it won't be visible at all because we're going to throw some color hardener on top of this concrete so that gives you a cream layer right over the top of that fiber so as I'm putting this Concord in I am make sure to hit the sides of the forms a lot to get all the air out of it and you could use a vibrator on this you really don't need to if you tap the edges really well and the color of this cap is gonna be what they call an ash white and it's made from Schofield makes this color Arden err it's about a forty-five to fifty-five thousand psi so that means no fading no chipping a really really really good color coat it's probably the best one color hardeners probably holds up the best out of any kind of coloring techniques out there because it's an integral part of the concrete when you work it in wet like this and it gives it a nice hard shell at 5500 psi the nice thing about the color hardener is it's pure cream when you go to trial this so it's very very easy to work with now I have another video that gets into a little bit more detail of the color hardener and the actual tools that you'll need to do a job like this that's in another video we'll throw out some links so you can go back and forth if you need to but I'm gonna put some joints here I'm gonna put them every five feet and then also we're gonna have to go down the face of this at the same time so as you notice that number three rebar what I'm doing there I'm jabbing it down the face that moves the rock so when I strip this form and joint the face of it I won't have to pound my jointer into the face because I've already moved the rock with the number three rebar see that little technique there that's a little beauty one to definitely remember if you ever do this well we threw one coat on there we hand floated that in we threw let that dry through another coat on and then we trialed it so usually two coats and your pretty pretty much good to go in your color you might find a couple more gray spots here never we could just do little dashes here and there and this probably is about an hour and a half after we started mixing this is about an hour and a half later because you know I used that 4500 so it's gonna go out pretty quickly anyway so we're gonna edge the bottom of this so I took it off that two by eight right there now I'm gonna what I did with that color are dry mixed it with some water and then I just buttered it on kind of like a stucco project now at this point we're about an hour and a half hour 45 into this job we're pulling them sides off okay so this is how you put the cream on the sides of these mix it up wet in the bucket Neutrality and you actually they recommend you a hand floating it in to really make it work it into the concrete so it doesn't try to come off but since the concrete's wet enough here we're able to just trial it on also what you do before you even apply the colors you want to get your edge on the bottom get that cut in or at least get some of those rocks out of the way so that way when you throw the butter on there you can run your tools really easy so we have a top tool there and then we have a trowel and an edger and that's about all you need in this particular deal you get into some of the intricate foam shapes and stuff then they have specific tools that fit or supposedly fit every foam design I haven't had much luck with them fitting that well but there's some good techniques you can make make on your own to fit fit those intricate foam designs well there's the joints on the face which I cleared out with the rebar jab just to make it easy to run Maya jointer vertically that I'm gonna beat the rock in this is the first side of it we still have the backside to go through this is just gonna be a smooth finish no broom no sand wash nothing special we're gonna keep it smooth no trial mark so I'm just gonna kind of look like a piece of glass about that smooth just you know I like to do when I'm talking smooth finish so I have my son going ahead of me here I'm throwing the butter on there colour hardener you know mix with water kind of like icing on a cake basically they're your troweling technique I have a child it's just about the right size for this width of cap and trial that's wide enough so if you turn it sideways you can catch the whole side of this one with one stroke well that's kind of what it looks like when it's all said and done nice and smooth then you've got those two-by-fours underneath those are gonna come off you can't take them off the same day you might get away with it but it's risky so you leave them on there for a couple days depends how far you're hanging out to I mean the further you hang out the longer you gotta leave it on there to support that way before the Congress not enough to support itself so we'll leave it on there two days I believe I took this off the next morning and it held well when you're removing the forms it's important when you do remove them to pull the screws and instead of pulling the form outwards pull it downwards is if you pull it outwards you might be hooked up underneath there if the forms weren't flush something like that and you can knock chunk of the face off so just go down drop them straight down this is the next day we just stripped it out and I'm taking a look at this thing and it looks pretty good drying out real nice so that's where I needed that space on that notch out just to work the top of this lower cap this is a half-inch radius all the way around top and bottom and joints and depth of joints so that's easy one to remember it's half-inch everything thank you for watching the video if you liked it subscribe remember I have a link to more detailed of this video if you like these type of videos or you want to learn how to do it you may want to press that little bell next to the subscribe button then you'll get all the latest and greatest when I upload and then you'll be on top of things when you get out there try to handle one of these things on your own have a good day and thanks for watching

Channel: Odell Complete Concrete

Views: 1,127,520

Rating: 4.830296 out of 5

Keywords: Concrete wall caps, how to build concrete wall caps, how to pour concrete wall caps, how to build forms for concrete wall caps, how to build a wall, how to build a radius wall, how to finish concrete, how to set block, how to setup block string lines, how to finish concrete wall caps, how to color concrete, how to color concrete wall caps

Id: 6MoX4l6iHE8

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2017