How To Pour Stamped Concrete

in this video I'm going to show you how to pour stamped concrete so we're going to be going over how to form for the concrete how to pour the concrete and how to stamp it and if you're new this channel my name's Joshua channel is all about building your own house saving a ton of money so be sure to subscribe ring that Bell so you get notification airtime release new video and Hammer that like button for me that's all I asking turn for making this video so we got a lot to do today so let's get started very first thing I'm going to do is determine the top in which I want to pour the stamp concrete if we take a look here this is going to be the top of the concrete that's inside the building here and then we're going to have a little drop down to the top of the stamped concrete it's already predetermined this for what I want and all we got to do now is measure down to that Mark and we got about six and a half inches so I need to go to the other side of this wall to the corner of the slab and measure down six and a half inches I'm here at the corner of the wall and again I'm just going to measure down six and a half inches and make a mark on the Block and I made this this Mark using a crayon a crayon is going to show up way better on this block than trying to use a pencil because it Blends in with the mortar so as you can see we got a nice six and a half inch Mark so we know that's going to be the top of our form board when it comes to the material used for your form boards there are so many options you can use I'm going to use a simple 2x6 board as my form board you can also use a 2x4 or a two by ten depending on how deep the corner of the slab is going to be and you can also rip down sheathing or OSB in order to form your concrete as well so it really depends on what you're trying to go if you're trying to do a curved look some people use PVC board in order to bend it and form it but again these are going to be straight runs so these two by sixes are going to work perfect and I do recommend trying to eyeball them and get straight ones when you're selecting your material before you start forming up your concrete slab you must first prep the site and in order to prep the site here what I did is poured Footers where each post is going to be setting in order to support the roof over this outdoor kitchen and also I put a bed of gravel down I like to put at least two inches of gravel down for proper drainage underneath of the slab and it gives it a place for the concrete slab to shift around and not crack so that's very important and also you want to make sure that it's about this grade that you want doesn't have to be perfect but if it's within an inch or so I'm going to pour this slab about five inches deep so I already have this leveled out properly when I was using the skid steer in order to get this nice and level I'm now going to grab this 2x6 and I'm going to lay the top of the two by six up to the top of that Mark we made so we're just going to set it right in a place like so and as you can see I got it I need to put just a little bit under it to get to proper elevation and that looks good now we're flush with that Mark that we made I'm going to put a string line going across this wall just to make sure my form board's setting straight then after that we're going to level it up the way we need it to get the proper slope and when it comes to sloping we want to make sure we have about a one to two percent grade away from the structure so we need to slope that way so water drains away from the building and the best way to do that is is I'll show you here in a minute using the bubble of the level in order to secure the form board to this block Foundation I'm just going to use a masonry bit and some tapcons along with the impact driver to secure it so I'm just going to put two right here to hold it into place [Music] I'm now going to take my String Line a hammer and a piece of rebar in order to stake out a string line going straight off the side of that building in order to give me a straight line to put my formboard now as you can see we got our String Line running straight off the edge of the building and exactly where we want the edge of our form board I'm now going to slip the form board properly away from the structure so what I like to do is just take a four foot level place on top of my form board and as you can see the bubble is just touching the right side of these two lines you can see it's towards the right one instead of the left one so if the bubble is going this way it means I'm slipping away from the structure so that's probably a little bit more aggressive than I want I like for the edge of the bow will be right against the line now in order to not have such an aggressive slope I'm just going to take gravel and lift it up to where I want it and just pack it around the formboard and lift it up at the same time to lift it up just a little bit so now as you can see the bubble is just touching the line on this side so that means we're sloping gently away from the structure in case that was a little difficult to understand just note that the line line in which is next to the structure is the line the bubble should be touching to give a slope away from it for this next step I'm going to use what are called duplex Nails these are two and a quarter inch and I'm going to use concrete forming stakes and these are just steel rebar more or less with holes in them that can be reused for multiple jobs so all I need to do is take this and put Stakes about every four or five foot along this two by six to hold it into place whenever I do this I'm going to make sure the string line is on the edge of this two by six so I know I'm on the straight plane where I want the form board now that I got the stake driven to place I'm going to put my level back onto the board to make sure it's at the proper slope and now I'm going to take a duplex nail and place it into one of the holes in the stake and pull the formboard to where I need it and Tack that nail to hold it into place to try to drive my stake right below the formboards top so in that the finisher is going across top of this Edge the stake's not going to be in the way I'm now going to come over here about four or five foot and I'm going to repeat that process thank you in case you're wondering why we use a duplex nail instead of a regular nail it's so we can easily take our claw hammer to grab that and pull it out after we're done forming the concrete and if you need to purchase any of this stuff I'll put a link in the description below so you can purchase it for your project all right now in order to extend this form board I'm going to lay my next form board up into place and then I'm going to take a small piece of stock here and I'm going to lay it right up against where they're going to be bond together in order to do this I'm going to use this typical deck screw I like to use a three inch one so that way it doesn't penetrate into the concrete slab then put four on each side of each form board and be sure to line the top of this form board up with the pre-existing form board now before I go any further I'm going to go ahead and secure this and plumb up this form board where we need it [Music] I'm now here at the end of the concrete pad and before I finish up this corner I'm going to go over here and do the same thing to the other side of the concrete slab to get them out to the same distance away from the building [Music] now that I got this side ran I'm going to have to measure 26 feet off this Edge according to the plans so I'm going to just top pop a screw right here on top of this form board and measure down 26 feet and make a mark all right right here at the 26 foot Mark I made a mark with my marker I'm now going to take my speed square and just Mark a line right down the form board using the marker and then we need to put our next form board on that side of the mark and do the same thing to the other form board I'm now going to place this screw right at that 26 foot Mark in this case and drive it in and didn't do the same to the other side and I'm also going to take my String Line go right around that screw Mark and then I'm going to run my string line to the other form board as well I'm now going to place this next form board right up to the layout for the form boards I'm now just going to use my deck screws and put three in the back side to hold these form boards together now continue this form board like we did the other form boards to get to the other side [Music] I'm now going to take a chalk line and chalk a line from one point to the other so I have a straight reference line going across this block wall but first i'm going to come over here to the center I'm going to measure down that five and a half inches so that way if the String's sagging the chalk line we can just hold it here and snap it so we get a perfectly straight line all right now we got a chalk line across our block we can use this reference line when we pour this next part is something you may or may not have to do because this is such a big stamp job for a small crew the person that's going to be doing the stamping wants me to put a board going across the center and just like any other form board and we're going to use that to make this pad first before we do this pad over here so that way he's not rushed trying to get this done by itself and also it's very important to think about stuff like that when it's warm or if it's cool out because the warmer it is the faster the slab will set up [Music] now that I got all the form boards up and they're secured with the stakes as you'll notice there's a gap right here underneath the formboards and if your formboards aren't wide enough in order to cover up right down to the ground which a lot of times they won't be because you got to be able to manipulate them as you put them in but all we got to do now is come back through and backfill with dirt right along this Edge or gravel or whatever material will have to stop the concrete from flowing out under the formboard when you go to pour your concrete foreign [Music] mesh is I gotta run conduit to my hot tub I'm going to be hitting the side of the garage here and it's going to come over and elbow right up out of the concrete and I'm going to Elbow right upside the wall there and since this really isn't how to install electrical conduit if you want to see how do that check out the video in the top right hand corner of the screen or I made a video just for that so I'm just going to do a time lapse putting this in so enjoy once I determined exactly where I want that inch and a quarter conduit coming up through the concrete slab for the hot tub I scraped off the gravel and then I dug down deeper using a pick so a pick and a shovel worked great in this case I'm just going to use heavy duty PVC cement in order to glue together my conduit I have a long sweep elbow here that's going to go up to the 50 amp GFI breaker that's for the hot tub and now I'm just going to use simple tapcons and strap in order to hold everything into place and I'm spacing it away from the wall an inch and a half the reason why I do that is because once the siding's on it's going to push that wall back a little bit or actually forward I should say so I need a little bit of a space to compensate for that so a 2x4 worked great then after I strapped it to the wall I went ahead and continued my conduit and just glued it together using the heavy duty PVC cement I do like to use a level to level up my conduit before the concrete's poured at least get it closed so it's not that hard to adjust later and then I just did a long sweep elbow right up through the concrete slab using about a two foot piece and it's again the same process just long sweep elbow coming right up out of the concrete and then back filling was really easy I just took a rake and ripped it all back right over the conduit then I also installed a small piece of conduit that's going to give her to my workbench in the garage side of the build I'm now going to touch base on what I put down inside of my concrete slabs whether it's stamped concrete or standard slab this is what I'm going to be doing I got a five foot wide by 100 foot roll what's called wire mesh and this wire mesh is really nice it's really affordable this row here cost me about two hundred dollars roughly and you can find it cheaper in some places around 150 dollars but this is going to lay out on top of six mil plastic I put six mil plastic down right over top of the gravel after it's been compacted and then this is going to give a Good Vapor Barrier so moisture won't come up into the concrete from underneath which is very important but I want to also mention you can get what's called rebar and you can take a rebar and crisscross it about every two foot and then wire it together and that will be in replacement of the wire mesh now is wire mesh better or worse than using the rebar well you have two types of concrete in this world you have concrete that has cracked and you got concrete that's going to crack so whether you use wire mesh or lace rebar either one has potential of cracking and I'm not sure if there's any long-term studies on either or but from my experience wire mesh or rebar Works about the same but definitely check your local building codes in case there's a specific way that your local jurisdiction wants it done so I just want to show you some up close visuals of the conduit as you can see we got our conduit down here in the gravel and it's going to run right over here it's going to come up into the panel box where our sub panel is going to be and also if we take a look over here this conduit here is going to be for the hot tub as you can see we got our inch and a quarter and I have it pulled back off the block so concrete can go back in behind here but still spaced appropriately and then we come over here and it is stubbed up right through where the concrete's going I also wanted to show you what I did here as you can see that's the top of the concrete so we needed a place to stop the concrete from going back here into the garage side all I did was put 4x4 posts down into the cell of the block and space it appropriately to get it flush to the outside of this wall so that's something like that you may have to do as well it is now time to prepare the ground for the concrete slab the concrete finishers start by using a vibratory plate compactor a vibratory plate compactor is a construction tool that is used for compacting and preparing the surface for concrete before pouring and finishing it usually consists of a heavy steel plate commonly referred to as the compaction plate which is an attachment to the vibratory mechanism the primary purpose of the vibratory plate of the compactor is to eliminate the air voids and achieve a dense solid base for the concrete after the soil was compacted we place the six mil plastic down and threw gravel over it to keep it in place as they were placing it and we just cut it to form right into where we want to pour the first slab and then we cut off the excess and kept the excess for a later date and next we're going to use the 10 gauge wire that I showed you earlier and they first rolled it out and cut it to length and after they cut it to length they kind of bent it in order to lay flat and you can buy these in wire Sheets if you do not want to buy the rolls the wire sheets are a little easier to work with but this is definitely a more convenient way to buy it and when this stuff is placed in the concrete slab it's going to be overlapped enough to tie together and if you want to know what they're cutting with they're cutting with a pair of bolt cutters as you can see it cut it really easy and they also took the bolt cutters and cut pieces of the overlapping wire mesh and then Twisted it to the other piece that is overlapping it and that ties it together instead of using tie wire I did ask the finisher if they preferred to use wire mesh or steel rebar they like to use the wire mesh because they noticed throughout time that wherever the rebar was in the concrete slab it tend to cause cracks wherever it was placed so wire mesh was superior to the rebar according to them the first section of the stamped concrete was already poured and finished but I'm going to walk you through step by step on the second slab The Finisher first put what is called powder release concrete powder release also known as concrete release agent or release powder is a substance that is in decorative of concrete application and it creates a contrasting color or pattern on the surface of the concrete it typically is in a dry powder material that spreads onto the concrete surface after it is freshly poured and wet we are now filling up the forms using concrete and we are using concrete placers to pull the concrete around in order to fill up the form properly before we started pouring this concrete slab the Concrete Finisher instructed the concrete truck driver on how to mix up the concrete before we start pouring because it is important to have the right consistency if it is too dry it will sit up too quick and it's hard to work with and if it's too wet it'll take too long to set up and will not be as strong I would like for you to note the rubber boots the finishers are wearing it is important to wear those if you're going to be walking around in the concrete and you also want to avoid any contact with your skin to the concrete during the pouring process foreign [Music] after the concrete has been setting long enough it's time to use the vibrating powered screed tool a vibrating powered screed tool is also known as a power screen or a concrete screed it is a construction tool that's used to level and smooth freshly poured concrete surfaces and is designed to replace traditional hand screeding methods which can be labor intensive and time consuming it power screen consists of a long flat metal or aluminum blade that typically ranges from 4 to 16 feet in length with a vibrating mechanism that is attached to it the vibrating mechanism is powered by an engine or motor and generates rapid vibrations that distribute the concrete evenly and removes all the air voids as well similar to the compactor that I explained earlier and it is a more uniform level Surface after you run the screen across it when the finisher was using the power screed they place it along the top of the freshly poured concrete with the vibrating blade parallel to the edges of the framework or working area and then they act activated the vibration which was the motor that was doing the oscillations and it transfers the energy to the blade which helps vibrate the concrete down and then when the operator holds onto the handles or the grips attached to the power screen they got it along the surface of the concrete and the vibrations from the blade help consolidate the concrete and it sometimes will take multiple passes that I notice when they were using this tool to get it to look really good but with an experienced finisher this is definitely a tool that is worth having if you're curious to know how to calculate concrete really easy I recommend just using your phone and going to calculator.net and finding the concrete calculator and I'll put a link to them in the description below but there as you can see if you punch in your width of your slab into thickness it gives you exactly how many yards you need and on top of how many yards you discover you need you need to add about 10 to 15 percent extra for the waist if there is one thing that a Concrete Finisher really hates that's any type of pipe or conduit coming up through the surface of the concrete as you can see the finisher had to move the screed right around the pipe or in other words a conduit in this case but with an experienced finisher it was really not that big a deal once they were done using the power screed the next tool they used was called a Bull Float a Bull Float is a tool that is used in the process of finishing concrete as well for the smooth and level surfacing and it consists usually of a long or flat rectangular Square shaped blade which is typically made out of aluminum or magnesium or even wood sometimes and it's attached to a handle or a pole for maneuverability sometimes before using The Bull Float I've seen concrete finishers dampen the surface with water but in this case the water was already pulled to the surface fairly well and the water typically acts as like a lubricant to Glide the bull fluid right across the surface and The Bull Float when pushed and pulled across the surface in a backward forward motion it works by pulling the water right up to the top to help smooth out any of the imperfections and the person operating The Bull Float typically tries to apply some downward pressure after The Bull Float was finished it was time to use the edger and Edge the concrete a edger for concrete is a specialized tool that is used for finishing and smoothing the edges and round the edges of the concrete slab or Surface it's commonly used to provide a clean aesthetic pleasing finish to the edges obviously and the primary purpose of the edger is to prevent the edges of concrete from chipping is the real goal here and by creating the rounded Edge it takes the stress off the very end which helps from foot traffic or vehicles or anything like that from chipping the edges and timing is very important as well just like using The Bull Float you want to make sure it's still workable and is slightly damp and as you can see when he is using the edger he is using it in a continuous fat session and because it was such a pain to try to finish around this conduit for this stamp pattern that we're going to get ready to show you the finisher took an oscillating tool and just cut the conduit flush with the top of that concrete pad and that's going to make the stamp pattern go over the conduit and make it look really nice it's now time to go over the part you've been waiting for the actual stamping process of the concrete and I was really not too familiar with this process myself until I'm having it done as you can see here in this video so I had to finish or explain to me exactly what he was doing and why and how so the first thing he had to do was broadcast or sprinkle what was called that powder release agent I explained about earlier he first put that all over the surface of where he was going to be stamping the concrete and then he used these multi-colored mats that you can see here he's lifting up the blue one now and that's going to place the pattern on top top of the concrete slab and the different colors are different parts of the pattern that makes one big continuous pattern as you can see here and with that agent it helps separate the polyurethane matte from the surface of the concrete so that the concrete does not stick to the mat and it also colors the stamp concrete as well and it'll give it a two-tone contrast look once it is sealed but that's going to be a couple months down the road until it's actually sealed so I was instructed to keep the powder on the surface for at least a month and actually I'll probably keep it on longer because I'll be building on top of this surface so I don't want to risk damaging the surface but with that being said as you can see he moved that mat to the next place that starts stamping it and what he is using to pound it into the slab is called A pounder and it's usually made of aluminum and has a rubber bottom to it and when I first seen it I thought it was just a standard tamper for tamping the ground but it's not actually has a rubber bottom to it and he said it would tear up the mat if you had a steel one so you definitely want to purchase the correct one if you're going to be experiencing this yourself and he is actually walking across a 2x10 that is hovering over the concrete slab and he has a walk board that is going over the slab as well and he as you can see he's just moving that two by ten to walk across to get a head start on the stamping here is the really really cool thing about stamp concrete is that they make so many different stamp patterns that you can get so creative using the stamped concrete method so not only can you have different patterns but you also create inlays in different concrete slabs and whatnot and it's definitely a nice way to Accent a concrete slab in order to give a place a nice creative look and also whenever you're working with this stuff just note it's similar to working with any other concrete the warmer and drier it is outside the quicker it's going to set up so it depends on the temperatures outside is how fast these guys have to work so that's a really crucial part to this process [Music] hmm [Music] foreign [Music] part of this process I was really curious about to see how it was done is how it was placed up against a wall like you see here because clearly the mat is much larger than the wall as you can see just took the mat and placed it got as close as he could to the wall and pressed it into the concrete slab and got the pattern down really well and then he removed it and now he's going to take what is called a stamp texturing skin and as you can see it's just a skin that is lightweight that will put the texture right up to the wall without using the mat and I would like for you to know that these guys have been doing this for years so doing this yourself for the first time you're not going to be able to go as fast and as smooth as they did so if you're going to experiment with this I would definitely experiment with a really really small slab of concrete foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I was asking the finisher what would be the best brand of products to get for the mats and for the pounder and according to him the best brand out there is what's called brick form here's the bottom of the brick form pounder and also I did do a little bit of investigating for myself and found you can get these products off Amazon as well it won't be this brand they do make cheaper Brands but if you're just a DIY and you want to experiment with it that definitely might be the way to go you will notice they did not have masks on while they were putting the stamp concrete down but me personally I would highly recommend a mask because there is a lot of that release agent that goes up in the atmosphere while they are pounding the stamps but always check the manufacturer's recommendation when using any products foreign [Music] foreign [Music] concrete the following day I did end up pouring the concrete for my garage and I just wanted to walk you through and show you what we did here since we were pouring concrete and this is a concrete video as you can see we just filled up the whole garage floor of using concrete that is meant for the concrete slab and as you can see it's coming right out of the Chute in a similar consistency that we poured for the stamp concrete and we're just going to flood this whole area with the concrete [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign while we were filling up the garage with concrete one of the concrete finishers used an extra large concrete rake and was pulling around the concrete and filling up the cells of the Block in which the door was going to enter into the garage and this is a good way to help start the leveling process of the concrete slab [Music] degrees [Music] I would like to introduce to you what is called a concrete weather lip this is the framing and the forming for it and all it is is a two by four that's going across where the garage door is going to set and it's going to give us a nice inch and a half difference between the outside of the garage and where the garage door the seal is going to be so water will not penetrate through the bottom of the garage door because of the abrupt drop so we're going to fill it in with concrete and finish it just like we would any other concrete [Music] thank you [Music] I thought this was a pretty creative idea the Concrete Finisher cantilevered a walk board over the slab in order to finish around the pipe so they didn't have to wait now this is the biggest difference between the stamped concrete and a garage floor concrete slab the biggest difference is we're going to just use this trowel machine to give this a nice smooth finish and as you can probably notice by now it's much easier to do this than the stamp concrete work and because of that it's a lot cheaper to do it's about half the price to have a smooth finish put on a slab or a broom finish because there's way less labor and way less material involved so you don't have any release agent or anything like that so now that we're talking about expense I would like to go over how much it costs in material and for labor to have this whole concrete project done here that you see this is going to include the 26 by 26 damp concrete that I just showed you being done and this garage to have a smooth finish and the garage Dimensions is 38 by 26 so the whole project cost me ten thousand dollars to have the concrete done that was for material and labor so now I'm going to do the breakdown it costs three thousand dollars in labor to have all the stamping done and it cost twenty five hundred dollars in concrete for that outdoor kitchen area now this garage that you see here it costs about three thousand dollars in concrete and it was about fifteen hundred in labor so the total cost ended up coming up to ten thousand so as you can see it's much cheaper to have a smooth finish compared to stamped concrete and a broom finish is going to be even cheaper than that so with that being said you wanted to avoid stamp concrete unless you really want it or if you're doing a project for somebody so now what we're going to do here is give this a Ultra smooth finish by applying water onto the slab and just so you're aware this slab has been sitting for several hours to get to this point I know while you're watching this video it's hard to tell but this is about one two o'clock in the daytime and we started pouring around six o'clock in the morning so as you can tell it takes a lot of time to get to this point so this is going to be the very final step in this whole concrete pouring process I would also like to mention I do offer Channel memberships you can check out the link in the description below but that's a good place to have a much more closer look into my projects and I like to go live once a month for a certain tier of the membership so be sure to check that out below [Music] thank you [Music] I'm back here the next day on the stamp concrete that we poured in the video you just watched and I want to show you something if you take your finger across the stamp concrete you're going to notice this powder that's colored powder release that we were throwing down on top of the concrete as we are stamping it now I'm going to keep this on here probably for a good month or two that's because I'm going to be framing this and I don't want anything rubbing across this and scuffing it and that's powder is going to help protect it from that and I'm also going to lay something on top of it as well while I'm working around the stamped concrete and also I'm going to be sealing this after it cures out for a good month or two after it cures out all the way it's probably gonna be around August right now it's the end of May I'm going to put a nice heavy coat of sealer across all the stamping and also the garage slab that we just poured as you can see the outdoor kitchen side that has a stamped concrete attached to the side of the garage and this is the garage after the concrete was finished so as you see see it all tied in really well and it turned out really nice can't complain about that this was the first time I actually had a Concrete Finisher build what's called a weather lip and just so you know the garage door is going to sit right down in here and now there's no way water can get into your actual garage it's just going to run out onto our concrete driveway once it's poured so that's an awesome way to finish because you definitely won't get water in your garage because a lot of times if a hard rain hits your garage door it will blow in around the bottom so that's definitely not going to happen and also if you want to see how I'm going to frame this garage check out this video it'll help you out foreign

Channel: The Excellent Laborer

Views: 46,817

Keywords: how to stamp concrete, how to pour concrete, how to concrete, how to, how to pour a concrete patio, stamped concrete, how to pour a concrete slab, how to form concrete, how to pour a concrete floor, how to pour a concrete driveway, concrete, how to form concrete stairs, how to build concrete steps, how to pour stamped concrete, concrete stamps, diy concrete, concrete tools, concrete stamp, concrete slab, concrete skills, pouring concrete, decorative concrete

Id: bmSaz8INPuc

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023