How to pour and finish concrete like a PRO! - The Barndominium show E127

it is 6:00 a.m. and we are pouring another concrete slab this morning so you can see things are going very well we are not using a pump on this one because this is a fairly small slab it's 200 square feet not only that we have access all the way around so we're able to tailgate it so that's what we're gonna do today again it is 6:00 a.m. we're using Ingram Ready Mix so far so good we have all three trucks lined up here so this one should go pretty quick we have one truck already dumped out the other one already backed up to the slab and the third one ready to go over here so you can see the third my cameraman floss fairness there's the third one you'll wake Daniel [Music] Daniel you'll wake it so anyway this one should go pretty hopefully we'll be home for lunch now while they're pouring concrete we have some guys going back behind them and making sure this forms are still straight that's you know concrete's pretty heavy I laughed because this video right here I April Fool's video I talked about how concrete is real light but anyway so concrete is very heavy so when you pour it out it's gonna push against the forms especially you know cuz we're gonna vibrate it so that vibrator will shake everything including the forms the forms can open up some so when we do is we put a string line we stretch it all the way across and we verify that all the forms are still straight after the concrete have it hasn't been poured once we pour the concrete string lines are verified the forms are straightened out then you let it set up and then now you're going to end up with a straight slab we do that obviously before before we make sure the forms are straight but you have to do it afterwards because it's going to move that's almost a guarantee all right so as you guys can see they just finished pouring this lab that didn't take long it is seven thirteen right now so it took a it took an hour we got it poured out so what you want to do you want to pour that concrete Attis thick as possible which is called slump you want the slump to be as low as possible okay however I mean I know you have to get out of the truck and you have to work it so I like about a five maybe a six-inch slump that seems to work the best now we always pour straight SEC cement so that also helps you know in case you want to add a little more water because we have a more cement than than normal however you know I don't like to go over it over a six six-inch slump so anyway this one's poured out but as you guys can tell once we pour it out they screed it flat and then they go over with the Jitterbug the Jitterbug pushes all the aggregate down there are some other methods of doing that there's one called the roller I don't know what it's called it's a roller instead of a jitterbug it's it's actually it's an actual roller and that's one that I kind of want to try out however you do that and that's gonna push the aggregate down bring some of the cream up and then you go back with the bull float right after that the bull float is going to flatten out pretty much the the cream that just brought up with the with the jitterbug you're gonna flatten it out that's gonna leave the cream on the surface and then you let it leave it alone do not touch it after that and what's gonna happen is you're gonna start getting some bleed water to come up that water is water that's in the concrete but conker is like a sponge right it's pretty heavy so that it's actually collapsing on itself and push water out you do not want to trowel it while you have bleed water pressing because what it's going to do is its you're gonna trap that bleed water and you're gonna have delamination so do not trial concrete while you have bleed water on the surface okay again we're gonna both float it and then we're gonna leave it alone wait for this bleed water to be gone and we're gonna wait for it to pretty much where you can walk on it almost watching you'll be able to walk on it and you don't want to be able to sink more than a quarter-inch if you sink more than a quarter-inch it's still too too wet so you want to leave it to where you think about an eighth of an inch that's kind of what I prefer especially if it's cool like it is now an eighth of an inch and then you can start panning of course before that we're gonna run or bump out cutter and then we'll put the machine on there with a floating pan we float the whole slab that's gonna make sure that it's flat you see concrete does not dry flat you have to make it flat okay so we're gonna come back with a bull float and then we're gonna do the bump cutter then we're gonna run the plan floats on the trail machine and we're gonna run two passes minimum perpendicular to each other you run one east to west and then the other one north to south or vice versa you just have to make sure that you're at least around two passes with the floating pan so that you don't create waves okay after that we pull the Machine off with a pan or we simply pull the pan off the machine and then you hit it with combination blades at least you know one or two passes and then we go in with the finishing blades and that's it I know it sounds simple but that's pretty much the entire process of finishing concrete so that's what we're gonna do today and we're gonna try to show you all of that and so that you guys can see how a slab is finished okay so if if you notice after they run the bull float you can see in the concrete how there's kind of dips in a way and now it looks flat because what they did is you know the aggregates on the on the bless your base right and then you have your cream on top you can tell where the places where it's a little bit shinier that just means you have a little more cream there okay so technically your aggregates not perfectly flat on the bottom okay that's where the floating pants and the bump cutters all that comes in because if you just start troweling and you're not careful with how you trial you're going to make dips in the concrete okay so anyway that's that's one reason that I like to use floating pants and bump cutters once we hit it with a floating pan the floating pants gonna go in and what the floating pants actually gonna do it's gonna flatten the aggregate in the cream that's why you know it's going to build cream on the surface and then we can have to come back with the combination blades and then the finishing blades and then then we worth the cream so you have to work concrete drive from the bottom up okay so you have to kind of work it from the bottom up you don't want to you don't ever want to go on here and your first pass be with the finishing blades you will ruin the concrete okay do not ever make your first pass with finishing blades and if you ever see somebody do that take them out back and beat them whip them whip them hard because they should not ever do that so anyway that's kind of the process just if you think about it that way you work it from the bottom up you flatten the aggregate first and then you finish the cream you're gonna have a nice flat slab so as you guys can see the bump cutter works really good for flattening the slab but also works really good to push the bleed water off the slab so if you want to get the bleed water off the slab you can simply use the bump cutter get it all off and you get to blend your slab all at once you know in the winter we use the bump cutter a lot [Music] [Music] all right so what we're doing here is we're flipping the blades so finishing blades they have two edges they're symmetrical so you run it one way when the blades wear down you've taken you flip it 180 degrees you put it back on and now you have the the other edge so pretty much you have a you have two blades in one if you have combination blades you only get to use one side because those are offset and they're bigger and they they're just again they're not symmetrical they're bigger on one side so on this machine we have finishing blades and they are poly blades so I've had those blades on there for about 11 months and that's just one side so we're about to flip it to the other side now so those blades have lasted me so far we can just say they last a good 18 months a good set of blades so poly blades I know they're expensive but if you kind of do the math they're gonna last about 18 months they they're not that expensive so anyway that's what we're gonna do now flip the blades and then we'll have a new set of blades to put on this slab all right so let me show you real quick this machine that we have the poly blades attached to this is a 10 horsepower motor and we blew this motor up so I just went to Carver Freight and pick this motor up for not much money the problem that we're having obviously is the centrifugal clutches they really put a lot of strain on the engines so what I did is I put a CVT clutch on this one and most of my trial machines so the CVT clutches they really help a lot because it really widens your range of speed on your blades and it gives you a lot more torque so as you guys see we run the floating pans a lot so that puts a lot of stress on the on the trial machines so the CVT really helps in the sense that it'll give you a lot more torque on the low end but then once you pull the pan off then you have a lot of high rpm on your blades for burnishing your slap so this is really a game changer for so once you do the CVT conversion you'll wonder why you were running centrifugal clutches because that's really the way to go so here's another very important step that is where the overhead door is going to come down and close so you'll have to make sure that you screed it with a straight edge to make sure you don't have any waves or any dips otherwise you're going to have some daylight under your door and it's not gonna sit flat against the concrete thus you can see here pS panting perpendicular to the first pass that's what you always want to do you always want to cross your passes perpendicular to each other again if you do not do this you're gonna get waves on your concrete you can tell how much better it's looking now that it's given it the second pass more moisture has left the concrete so therefore the concrete's going to start laying a lot flatter pass after pass this is probably the last pass we're gonna give it with a pan after this we're going to pull off the pan [Music] use the combination blades then we're going to hit it with a combination blades the same manner you have to cross perpendicular to each other once we do that we'll come back and just finish it off with the finishing blades concrete's all about timing if you notice here the slab has just enough moisture to where the pan doesn't require additional water but it's also not so dry that the pan will not dig into the concrete if you hit it just right it's going to go smooth if we fall behind you're gonna have a bad day alright so as you guys can see this lab is almost done and see we have to trial machines on there one running with combination blades the other one with the Polli blades so as you guys saw when we were running the the trial machine with a combination blades and the one with the Polly blades this is what the CVT clutches really come in handy you saw the combination blade trial machine he was really spinning those blades where the Polly blades you can see he's going really slow right now obviously he can speed it up a lot more if he needed to but at this point he doesn't need to they were spinning the combination blade real fast to bring up more moisture and therefore we don't have to spend the Polly blade so fast again if we needed to we could but at this point he doesn't have to so after we're done with the foundation we'll pull some hoses out here put a sprinkle on it because it's gonna get pretty hot today you do want a water cure your concrete if possible because concrete even though it's dry or it's set it's not done curing it meets moisture to set up so especially like today it's gonna get up to about 90 degrees so and it's starting to get windy that wind will suck the moisture right out of the concrete so we'll get it done here shortly and then we'll put a sprinkler on it and wet it down which it's going to make sure that we don't have well it's not going to make sure but it's going to get was the best possible chance of not having surface cracks so notice the pattern that is doing this is the past that he just made and he'll put another pass right here going that way on the way back you want to overlap those two passes okay so you kind of do figure eights all the way back and obviously obviously you always want to be walking back you don't ever you know that will cover your footprints and everything notice a mirror finish that the Polly blades put on that concrete you can tell a reflection on the concrete once the machine go five now here's something that you really need to be careful about see the scream down here that was left behind when we picked up the trial machine so you need to make sure you remove the child machine but you have to come back and hand travel this or else it's gonna dry right on the surface and pretty much ruin the entire slab because customers gonna show up he's gonna walk up and that's the only thing he's gonna see he's gonna miss how perfect how perfectly squared the slab is she's gonna miss how level it is he's gonna miss the entire beautiful finish on the slab this is the only thing they're going to focus on so make sure you clean that up before you do anything else you can still see the mark right now but that's once it dries it'll be gone there's really no more concrete on it here I'll do this and it'll go away again be very careful with little things like that just because like I said you can ruin a perfectly good job by simply leaving that there all right so there you have it 30 by 40 slab done we're gonna leave the forms on we're gonna come back tomorrow and pull them off and then plaster the slab the customer is going to put a sprinkler there at 2:00 p.m. he's got it right here and I told them right now it's still a little too green that's what we call concrete when it's not completely dry so it's a little too green right now to get on it and put a sprinkler on it however a couple more hours the sun's really gonna start beating on it I told him go ahead and put a sprinkler on it for a couple of hours just make sure the slab gets nice and wet and do that for about the next seven days every day you really want that concrete to have some water this concrete meets water to set okay so the more water you give it the better it is concrete will actually set up under water for example if you're pouring Congress starts to rain don't think it's not gonna set up it is gonna set up so anyway this slab is done and we're going to the next jobsite I'm Eric and we are Texas bar no minimums see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Texas Barndominiums

Views: 371,237

Keywords: Texas Barndominiums, Texas Barndos, Tx Barndominiums, Tx Barndos, Erik Cortina, How To, DIY, Custom Metal Homes, Metal Buildings, Texas, Barndominiums, Barndos, Metal Building Homes, concrete, pour concrete, finish concrete, barndominium concrete, concrete price, sq. ft., square foot, finishing, slab finishing, step by step, barndominium plans, cement, cement finishing, cement pour, poor

Id: 1ztpumSEAjg

Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019