How To DRY POUR CONCRETE SLAB and Update of Our 1st Pour

hey y'all welcome back to Cajun Country Living today right where we are standing we are going to start pouring another dry pour concrete slab this has been one of our most request equipment when started YouTube I'm going to put the link to our first ever dry pour slab right here if you want to go check that out and we are going to do an update of that slab also in this video so stay tuned for that now the dry pour slab that we're going to be building today is just going to be temporary because eventually there's going to be a large patio area right here so in the summertime we use this door all the time it's straight into our utility room so we are definitely going to need something temporary instead of all the mud tracking through the house and we're still building on our house in case this is your first video we're doing a building Series so y'all check that out but this is definitely not a main priority to get the permanent slab done right now so this is going to be perfect in the meantime in less than 60 bucks now in our other video we were very very new to YouTube and it was actually only our third video that we put out so we were still learning so bear with us if you go back and watch that video but in this video we're going to get a lot more detailed into actually how to do this and just more tips and tricks for y'all so hopefully with this lab this video we'll be able to clarify a lot of the little details that we left out of the first video this is a simple simple way to be able to achieve getting a slab without have without having to try to schedule a concrete truck pay a minimum charge fee because this is a small slab and it is actually cheaper than just going and buying pavers and putting by the door and then with this you don't have the grass growing up between there one paver settled and lower than the other and it looking like a mess eventually and this is something really nice that we're going to be using 80 pound bags today but you can get 60 or 40. so if you see us packing these heavy bags don't let that deter you from trying this out y'all this is going to be such a great project for anybody who wants a small patio they want to do it inside a garage even sidewalks so many things dog kennels there's so many options to do with this and like Jim said at a very very minimum price we poured a few of these already and whenever we first moved here we poured a patio in front of our RV now we did that traditional method of getting a cement mixer and making the pour that way the slabs that we've dried pour do not have one single crack not one single chip the one that we mixed is full of cracks so you be your own judge on what you want to do this is simple it is easy anybody can do it so here we go well the first order business is knocking down all the humps in front of the door in order to level the ground where the slab is going to be foreign [Music] the reason that you want the ground level is to make sure you get a consistent thickness when you set your forms it also is going to help to get a more accurate measurement on how much concrete you're going to need [Music] this is going to be a five foot by five foot slab so that's what we're measuring for now [Music] we measured from all four corners to make sure that we had plenty of room to set our forms foreign [Music] [Music] the slab we want a pretty good grade on it the eaves of the roof is going to dump right down on top of this lab and we do not want it running towards the house so we're going to end up putting the top of the slab at about the four inch Mark we're going to grade down until it gets to an inch and a half and that's right the slab is going to be an inch and a half thick at the bottom side profile slab is going to look like that water hits water runs away from the house so we are in south Louisiana we don't have an issue with the ground Heaven from frost or anything like that so if you live up north man it's getting close to Fried Chicken Thai but if you live in a Northern State or if you live somewhere that it gets really cold and you have an issue with heaving or any of that kind of stuff this might not be the application for you or it might be I don't know we don't live in an area where that happens but if it were me I wouldn't let that deter me at all I would scrape some of the topsoil back and get to the high compacted soil and I would build my forms and pour myself so we're getting to the part where we need to start making our forms in our first video we cut all of our corners on a 45 and everybody said well why did you do that why don't you just zip them on through a screw just like this well honestly you can do that but the only reason that we didn't is because we only have these three inch screws here at our house and we're just using all of our old stuff so like this Lumber came from just a project that we had done in the house and this is pretty much just scrap left over from building so we're using what we have on hand and as you can see there's no way that that screw would make it to hold this form so instead of going and buying some new screws to do this we're just gonna set all this aside I'm gonna do is take our saw slide it all the way over to 45. and zip them off we do want our form to be a perfect five by five so that's the reason that we're going to be using 90 degree angles today now you can make your forearm however you want to out of whatever you want to y'all get creative and make sure to tag Us in the videos if you do try this or send us some emails we'd love to see what you all have done on your projects [Music] so if you are going to use this type of form and use the 45 degree angles the next thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to measure five foot from the short end to the opposite short end now I'm just going to have to turn my saw completely the opposite 45 so now we got a 45s on each end and we're going to do that two more times I'm going to straight cut this because it's going to butt up right against the house and the house is going to act as our back formation of our slide [Music] foreign [Music] so I went ahead and lined up this joint and pre-drilled where my screw is going to go it's kind of Overkill but I wanted to have a real tight plush Square joint so it just helps me get it straight [Applause] [Music] if we were just going to pour a flat slab we could just lay these forms down make sure they're level and go but being as air slab is going to be on an angle we're going to set it in place and make sure that we got the elevations wrapped so here we're going to put these forms in place and make sure that they're at the right height because we're not going to use Stakes to screw this Farm too that'll get in the way of our screen which you'll see later [Music] so now on the inside of this Frame it is a perfect five foot by five foot square on the grade we were looking for so what I'm gonna do now is take this marker paint because out here you got to remember this isn't going to be but an inch and a half and I know I know I cannot wait for the Comets to start rolling in because all the concrete Whispers out there is going to be like you can't have organic material underneath your concrete slab but you can this is going to be foot traffic only if it does settle it's not going to be much because this house pad goes way out here and this is a little bit of topsoil drug back in for the grass to grow so I think we're gonna be okay so everywhere that I paint I'm going to dig out a little bit because with the water running off the house we don't want it to undermine the side of the slab and digging a little tiny chain wall all around the outside perimeter of this thing is just going to help keep that water from undermining the slab and that's all we're after [Music] thank you [Music] we have our form exactly where we want it we leveled it and everything looks perfect so the next step is going to be to take this Dart or extra dirt that you dug a hole in your backyard and you're going to want to pack all these cracks and Open Spaces where you see on the side so the more compact that you do it the more likely you are to get that perfect shape so right now if we just left this big Gap open for example right over here all that concrete would pour out over on this side outside of the form that we made so we're just going to take this dirt you can take sand whatever you want and just make sure that it's piled in and packed in really really good around your forms I think it's easier to do by hand you don't got to do it by hand but I really feel like you get a much more precise form if you do it like this and that's a pretty good method if you're doing a five foot by five foot slab but if you're doing a real deal Big Slab yeah those hands probably get tired [Music] foreign [Music] that is all that there is to it everything that we used here was stuff that we had around the house and just because we made our forms out of wood does not mean that you have to all you need is just something to hold the concrete in now if you notice we didn't put any kind of reinforcement in here no wire no rebar no anything this is going to be foot traffic only it's 3000 psi concrete so unless me and Lydia really back on the pounds we should be golden so is it time to pour let's do it okay so we just dumped out a little bit of concrete out of the bags off the top of the bags and you can see where the concrete is already wicking the moisture out of the ground into the concrete and that's how it does makes like a capillary action you'll just Wick the cut the moisture right through it so when you get the concrete in the bags it's pre-mixed that's why it says on the bag just Add Water crazy chicken so as long as you add water to the concrete you're doing what the bag says we're just going to do it in a really unconventional way [Music] I just love love working with these 80 pound bags whenever I don't weigh much more than that get a good workout in for the day [Music] foreign [Music] things about working like this with the dry concrete is that you're not going to be in a rush to try to get this done because we all know if you've worked with concrete before that it dries so quick this way you're going to have plenty of time to get it smooth and exactly how you want it so we poured just about a third of the concrete so far and what we're going to do is go ahead and push it up close to the house and get it about where it's going to live [Music] now that we're getting it pretty close to the top of the Farms we're going to go ahead and take our screed and make sure we don't have any low spots we've got this pretty near to where we want it there's a couple little low areas you can see right here we're going to fill that in as we go to make sure it's nice and level now whenever you're finishing wet concrete where you would have your screed then you come back with a Bull Float and do all those things to get you a nice smooth finish obviously we're not going to leave it like this so you can see all the rocks it just looks like raw concrete what we're going to do in order to get these rocks to go away you have to take your screed and you have to saw it back and forth a whole bunch of times it makes that powder come to the top [Music] foreign [Music] thank you that's true [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so we got this lab poured nice and flat it's dry but before we add water to it and start setting this slab up to cure we're going to go that extra mile and really get this slit if you're doing this and you don't have an edge curler like this which we do we've done a lot of concrete work here I'm going to go around and soften these edges up a little bit but you don't have to you could go ahead and start your watering process now if you really wanted to but check this out this is how we put a really good finish on dry concrete powder oh so you're in a hurry well you better calm down [Music] cause if you're in a hurry [Music] so we got all these ages knocked down and smoothed out now this is the preferred method it's highly technical to finish this concrete slab so it's good it's flat but we want it smooth so you take this concrete roller Hooters just lightly roll it over this powder just like magic how about that huh so if you can paint the walls in your house you can finish a concrete slab like this [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] so the first time we're going to put water on this lab we got our nozzle set to the misting setting and we're just going to dampen it enough to change the color we just want to change it to a dark color and we're going to let that set for one hour then we're going to come back foreign [Music] do not have to cover your slab we just did in hopes that it would kind of deter the chickens from trying to leave some chicken tracks and as you all can see they are just itching to get on there so the reason we start out on the misting setting is because remember we have all that powder on top it would leave big water drops in the finish on your slab if you've used a more aggressive shower pattern nobody wants that so we covered the slab back up and we're going to be back in an hour to check on it after dampening the slab twice on the misting setting roughly two hours later the top has got firm enough to where I can switch it to the shower setting we'll let the slab down three more times using this setting waiting an hour in between sprays [Music] foreign and here we are at the next morning here's a good close-up of the slab we're going to give it a few more hours to finish drying and we're going to pull these forms off and before we show you all the result of what that looks like we are going to take y'all for a little trip to the backyard of where we had the chicken coop slab so in order to be able to show y'all a hundred percent what this ended up looking like after a year and a half we decided to go ahead and move the chicken coop [Music] foreign [Music] had to deal with the weight of this chicken coop but really what comes with the chickens also so we absolutely needed to get this thing pressure washed to be able to show y'all [Music] we definitely want to put the chicken coop back but we did go ahead and empty it out for a good spring cleaning and we do have a few ideas of what we want to do with the chicken coop in a few months but right now it is definitely not our main priority [Music] so it is time to finally update you all on this first dry course lab and there is no denying that this is the actual slab because if you all remember we had our chickens that walked right across here and the chicken tracks are still here so we poured this slab August 16th of 2021 which was a year and a half ago to this day we have absolutely no cracks in this lab we have had no issues no settling nothing our slide was five by eight and it was an inch and a half thick so whenever you lay a two by four on its side for example that's the thickness of this lab and it's holding the entire Chicken Coop which we built very very sturdy so as you all can tell this is held up extremely well [Music] foreign as you can plainly see the slab is still dry in about 24 hours after the pour we like to wait about 48 hours to remove the form from these dry pore slabs because from our experience it seems they take a little longer to cure but we decided to go ahead and pull the forms early so that we could show you all the results this project took 10 80 pound sacks of concrete at a total cost just shy of 60 dollars [Music] [Applause] we don't face any task with a mindset of we can't or it's always been done that way believe in yourself and allow your mind to be open and creative because if everyone was scared to try something new we would all still be driving a model Fords [Music] well thank you all for joining us for this video we hope you enjoyed it we have a lot more projects like this coming up if y'all enjoyed this so y'all make sure to hit that like subscribe button if you enjoyed this and we'd love to hear your feedback please leave us a comment and if you do try this please let us know we really like to hear from y'all so Cajun family we'll see you later [Music]

Channel: Cajun Country Livin'

Views: 6,031,013

Keywords: Cajun country living, Cajun country Livin, Concrete, Quikcrete, Concrete projects, Spring projects, Off grid living, Crockers , She’d build, Backyard ideas, Backyard makeover, Country living, DIY shed, DIY concrete, DIY fire pit, Easy projects, Pouring concrete, Dry concrete, YouTube series, Family channel, Cement, Dry pour, Chicken coop, Small slab, Summer project, DIY patio, New way to pour concrete, Cheap slab, Cheap diy, On a budget, How to, Google search, good S

Id: GC0j2Ey5NNk

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/cyberspaceking]

My policy is, I do not take construction advice from anyone who works in Crocs.

[u/mmodlin]

No. You don't know what your w/c ratio is, there's going to be dry pockets of concrete all over, the aggregate is segregated. None of those 'waterings' after the first one really do anything to advance the reaction, it's just curing the slab out, the top surface that was wetted the first time has already set up.

I've seen it done filling in the hole around a fence post or something like that where it's not really practical to mix your concrete, but concrete strength doesn't really matter there, you just want to fill the hole.

Obv it worked for this chicken coop, but they are in Louisiana, so no freeze thaw, and that ckicken coop weighs about 8 psf. It's nothing.

[u/Arctyc38]

... wow. People really be out there actively trying to come up with bad ideas.

[u/Enginerdad]

Yeah it works great. All the millions of people pouring concrete around the world every day are just too stupid to have figured out what Captain Crocs and his Made-For-Youtube wife discovered.

/s

[u/frothy_pissington]

So?

To successfully pull off one of these “dry pours” looks like I’ll need:

• a younger skinnier wife

• camo shorts

• Crocs

• a miter saw

• an “edge curler”

• a paint roller

• chickens

• southern pride

[u/[deleted]]

Not long term no. They didn’t add anything like select fill under it and there’s no rebar.

[u/nforrest]

I don't think this helps folks understand the difference between cement and concrete

[u/kje74535]

An old timer told me about this, so I did this dry pour method a few years ago for a 15’x10’ slab to park my F-250 on. I measured the exact amount of water for the amount cement. I used large trash cans for my water supply and a water pump with a water hose and spray nozzle. After 24 hours I hosed it down once a day for 2 days. It took about 3 weeks to get a good cure, possibly because I’m on a hill and the ground stayed wet from recent rain. However, It has never cracked. It seems to be as strong as the slab I poured for my shop using the traditional way of mixing water and cement in a mixer.

[u/kellven]

Jesus just get a mixer, I got a hand one off craigslist for my project for nothing.