Pouring A Concrete Floor on Radiant Tubing (Heated Concrete Floors)

we've got a heated floor we're pouring today pouring on radiant heat it's pretty typical for a radiant heat floor here in maine we got two inches of styrofoam wire mesh radiant heat tubes tied to the wire mesh about every eight inches apart so we pour a lot of these up here in maine four inches thick inside a frost wall and then they run everything over to where they'll hook it up into the system right over here they stub everything up they go hot and hot and cold water here this is probably going to be a bathroom or a kitchen but this is your basic heated floor all right so first trucks here we got 15 and a half yards so they split them up evenly mixing up right now we use these we use these rear dump trucks they don't have too many front axles here where we are so most of all the pours we do we got to use the rear dump on and then we always we got to shoot extension there we use that one a lot that's an eight footer that comes in pretty handy on a lot of these pores you can see the access the access isn't really that great for getting around this thing at least not with a concrete truck so he's just finishing mixing now we've got mid-range in there so we're looking for about a six and a half seven slump make the four nice and easy now if you're thinking of doing radiant heat for your heating system in your house this is basically what it's gonna look like in the concrete floor itself now there's three types of radiant heat there's hydronic which is what this one is and then there's electric where you can put electric mats of radiant in your concrete slab and then there's hot air which basically goes under your floor system and just heats your wood floor system which isn't very efficient the electric one really isn't that efficient this one's the most efficient one and this type of radiant heat is actually great for people with allergies too because it's not blowing air around in the house so that your your house isn't dusty or anything like that this one you know it definitely heats the concrete slab and then the concrete slab makes you feel warm when you're when you're walking on it when you're sitting on in your furniture or whatever like that so it's definitely the better type of heat as far as radiant heat floors go this one has two inches of styrofoam under it so the styrofoam does a couple things it it insulates the ground right it keeps the heat from going down into the dirt into the sub base and it deflects the heat upwards so it actually helps the heat get upwards into the into the slab and then obviously heat whichever you know room you're in in the house this one doesn't have a thermal break around the perimeter now we don't do the prep here we don't do the radiant heat we're just hired to pour and finish the concrete floor but we do i don't know we do hundreds of these in the year so in maine i mean a lot of people heat with radiant floors so that we're pouring on it every single week we're pouring on floors with radiant heat and a lot of them will actually have a thermal break around the outside edge too i get a concrete uh website that talks all about this uh the advantages the disadvantages the cost i'll have a link for that down in the description you can you can click on that link go to my website and check that out if you're interested in radiant floors it has a lot of good information there but i just wanted to give you guys a little perspective on how we pour these are they any different than pouring a regular concrete floor um not really i mean if both with or without floors are four inches for us we pour both the same slump we pour the same mix if anything we're maybe we're just a little more careful not to puncture the tubing although the tubing is really really uh rugged it's it's really hard to puncture actually so i think i've only in 40 years of doing this i've only ever punctured one and that wasn't while we were pouring that was while we was sawing the contraction joints after we got done traveling there was one little spot in the floor that kind of kind of heaved up a little bit i guess it didn't really heave up but there was it was one little spot in the subgrade that kind of lifted so when we saw the contraction joint we just nicked the tubing with the saw and we had to cut out a tiny little spot about one by one so they could fix that and replace it but pouring concrete like this i don't think i've ever not that i remember ever punctured the pipe or damaged the pipe pouring so you can wheelbarrow on it it's pretty rugged stuff this one here is a pretty typical application that we see is the the heating guy usually wants the tubing right on the bottom they don't want us lifting the tubing up into the concrete uh for whatever reason it seems to heat better this way is what they tell us so so and this one's on wire mesh we see them both ways tied to the wire mesh like this is now the wire mesh is basically in there for this for this pour just to keep the tubing nice and straight and neat and secure so it doesn't doesn't lift up into the concrete slab it's not really for reinforcement we got fiber mesh in the concrete for reinforcement in this so we don't really need the wire the other way we've seen it done is without the wire and then they just staple the tube into the styrofoam and that works okay i mean it is easier to to kick one of those stapled areas and have the staple pop out and then you gotta just make sure you push it back in this definitely a lot better the tubing doesn't move when you wire it right to the wire mesh like this this is the best way i think but both ways work but as far as pouring the concrete floor i mean it's pretty basic pretty simple for us doing it so if you're thinking of doing your concrete floor with radiant heat there's there isn't really anything else you got to do other than probably just put the styrofoam down you don't really need styrofoam in a regular concrete floor if you're gonna heat another way i guess if your floor was thicker maybe five inches or six inches it would actually hold the heat in the floor longer if you needed if you needed to do that for some reason but probably 90 percent of the ones we do in houses are four inches thick sometimes they'll be five but mostly most of them are four darren's shooting grades right now um whoever did the prep on this did a pretty good job the subgrade was within about was within about a quarter of an inch as far as being level and that that's really good in my opinion [Music] so that makes it really easy to lay the styrofoam on and then obviously lay the tubing on top of that we're getting this first truck dumped out we can dump right out of the chute on this one we don't need a pump truck having that little eight foot chute comes in pretty handy so that saves uh you know for us to get a pump truck for something like this it'd be about a thousand bucks just to get the pump truck so having a eight foot shoot that cost about 100 bucks that we can use over and over and over again definitely saves the homeowner a lot of money on floors like this plus we can tip that chute like that too to get up over the wall it makes it easier pouring so he's got about half three quarters of a yard left on we're gonna just empty him out get him out of the way and then the second truck can pull up well he goes and washes out who and how many of you guys pour on radiant floors like like i do let me know and if you do anything different than we do let me know that down in the comments and then who of you are thinking of doing a radiant floor i mean is that why you're watching the video because you're thinking you uh want to heat your floors and you're just wondering how the process is done that webpage i showed you earlier has got a couple other videos of us porn on radiant porn radiant floors also so it has a lot of good information about that one of them i think is on pouring right on top of plywood too on the first floor subfloor so you can pour actually radiant concrete floors right on top of plywood if you need to we got a little extra help today eric there in the white he's actually a school teacher but he works for me for a few weeks in the summer he's been working for me for over 25 years doing this but he uh he teaches school during school season now there's a bunch of pipes you can see over back there one obviously some of that is probably like a utility room and the orange tubing is for the the radiant for the furnace whatever's going to hook to the radiant tubing the blue and the red pipes are for hot and cold water for whatever throughout the house you know i don't know if they're going to be having some other type of um bathroom down here or kitchen in the down here and then obviously they'll probably have another one on the on the next floor up but this walkout this is what we call a walk-out foundation where you can actually walk right out of the foundation at floor level we there's a lot of foundations like this because of the way the landscape is here in maine you can see how the landscape slopes that allows for a walkout foundation like this that concrete foundation goes down below the ground 48 inches so four feet down below and that helps protect it against the frost line here now luke and eric are screaming while t is uh doing the raking over there and i'm in over there in the corner screeding a little area it's got a floor drain with a smaller screed trying to get out from beyond all those pipes over there we finish these the same too as far as the power troweling goes i mean we'll just we'll power troll this exactly the same way this guy's actually going to stain his concrete floor so we'll power trowel it nice and smooth and then he's going to stain it with some type of color and then put a like a clear finished epoxy with a urethane over it and just have the concrete floor as the finished floor they look really good you know when you power trolling nice and smooth it's a pretty cool look getting around all this all those pipes and stuff really slows things down a little bit as far as the pouring goes but i mean it's not too too bad this is early in the morning this is like 6 45 a.m in the morning we're getting going here that second truck is backing in and he's mixing right now while we're doing all this so he's getting all ready to go and then i'll back him up i don't want him to back all the way up to the foundation without me backing him because i don't want him to get too close to that we don't want to crack the foundation so he gets all his shoots ready gets gets mixing and he's just there waiting for us you gotta shoot i'm over there with a great stick with a laser you gotta shoot a few extra pads around all these pipes to make sure you get the floor nice and level so i'm i'm magging some wet pads there right at floor level giving the guys something to screed by that's what eric's doing right now he's striking the pad with us like a seven foot screed we use magnesium screeds when we go around all kinds of pipes and stuff like this that one right in front of you is probably about a 14 foot one we got all kinds of different levels 14 13 12 11 10 you know seven six five all different types of blanks that make it easier for them we could really honestly we could really use some new screeds so any if any of you manufacturers are out there listening and you want to donate some screeds to have on camera you know just just contact me and those screeds we got a pretty old so they're we're almost ready for some new ones eric was in there with like the six footer i got the seven footer and i'm just screening out that area darren's fixing up around those pipes getting that nice and level the more level and the cleaner you can get things why you screen and pour like this the easier it makes the finishing process the less the less touching up you got to do with the the power trial and getting on it by hand afterwards it makes finishing so much easier now i teach porn and finishing inside the concrete underground that's my private membership group area that's down in the description too there's a link for that if you want to check that out if you want to learn how to do all the types of things that we do that's the place to be just join that membership and then get access to me and all my training videos that are in there so we're just waiting for eric to get that last part both loaded screeded and then we're going to get that that next truck back in get that shoe hooked on and stop pouring the second piece whenever i dump out whenever i got two trucks and i dump that first one out i'm always looking to see if i've gone halfway you know if it hasn't gone halfway then you start getting a little nervous about running out but this one this one we were just over halfway so it's looking pretty good as far as not running out of concrete on this one there's nothing worse than running short having to wait for a balance load that could take you know who knows how long to get there an hour two hours to get back and then you gotta you gotta fight with a cold joint in the floor so we always try to come out beforehand and check the grades with the laser get our chalk line snapped that way we know exactly how much concrete you can see i'm backing him in there i want to make sure he doesn't get too close i've never backed one into a foundation i've never backed one close enough to crack a foundation so i don't want i don't want that to happen yeah you see how handy that shoot is you can get those shoots on amazon i think i have a link for them too down in the description you can check them out your if you have a local concrete store like we do we got a couple of them like an hd supply or a white cap you can get them there too they definitely save a bunch of pulling we don't wheelbarrow i don't know i don't think we will barrel any floors you know we we always use those shoots if we can't use a shoe then we have access to a conveyor truck that'll reach 40 feet you know you got to pay extra for that not as much as a pump though and then if that won't work then we get go for a pump i got a 12 foot shoot on the truck i got a 16 foot sheet on the truck too we can actually hook those together with the right slump and enough mid range or actually high range water reducer you could pour you know you could pour down 40 feet of chute without damaging the concrete so that's it for the shoot we'll get that out of the way a lot of times we'll get it out of the way and the concrete driver will just wash it rinse it right up for us that way the concrete doesn't start drying onto it good thing about having the fiber mesh in the concrete is you know we don't have to worry about the wire pulling any wire up or anything like that and when you've got a floor inside a foundation like this it's not going to go anywhere you know what the only place they could really go would be is if something's settled but usually the general contractors that we work for they they do a pretty good job making sure the excavating contractor compacts the dirt and lifts as he fills in the foundation like this so he'll put in depending on how big his compactor is you know he'll put in six eight ten inches and then compact that and then fill it up some more than compact that so it's more than likely they're not going to settle now again i'm shooting my pad my wet pad in the middle we generally will shoot pads sometimes we'll put in a grade steak with like a nail through it right at grade but for the most part we'll just shoot them with a laser like this and then we can then we can put them wherever we need them we don't have them like pre put in the slab [Music] i'm magging where we came off that that last truck right there just getting that ready to go for the for where we screed this darren and i are going to strike that pad then we're going to turn it and come down that front edge of that the front wall we just find it with all these pipes sticking out through we find it just a little easier just to hand screed around most of those you could use your power screed if you got one if you don't hand screed like we do i mean you can use your power screen just got to be a little more careful not to create any dips or humps with that as you go around all those pipes sticking out when we screed like this by hand because we've been doing it so long the floor comes out really really level we find [Music] so eric and tia are just spreading out the concrete getting that section leveled we're gonna we're gonna dump out a little bit more concrete and then we're gonna come up right up here and screed this piece right in front of you here to the right get off all those pipes so what we'll do today is we'll leave probably two guys here to finish the power trial one guy pretty much the power trial one guy to go around all the pipes and do all the edges and then three of us will head to a different job we'll either pour another job or we'll go prep and set up another job for the next you know the next day or two so that's typically what we like to do is report every day leave a guy or two or another one if we if we got one ready or if we can get concrete for another one it's sometimes it's pretty difficult to get concrete but uh or will at least go prep something like a pool deck a patio a stamped concrete slab a couple more floors [Music] but we're always doing prep and staying because we've got to have concrete ordered at least a couple weeks in advance so we have concrete ordered every day for a couple weeks in advance and at least two trucks so we try to get something at least something ready and then if we know that something else is going to get ready to pour then we'll call the batchman and say hey can we get can we get one or two trucks on the second round for this day and he lets us know if we can or not our batch man most of the time he reserves the whole first round which for him is nine trucks he's only got nine trucks so he'll reserve that whole first round for guys doing floors and then the second round he usually reserves for guys doing footings and walls so that makes it pretty good for the floor guys at least so sometimes it's kind of difficult to get up another floor in on the second round because you know all the wall guys have them but this is basically i mean this is basically how we pour a radiant heat concrete floor so if you're thinking of doing heated floors and you're wondering what the process is to get them poured by a crew like us it's basically the same as a regular floor it shouldn't it shouldn't really cost you more for a crew like us to come in and pour a floor for radiant heat so if you were wondering that you should a company shouldn't really charge you more to pour and finish a concrete floor um most concrete guys like us they we don't do the prep we don't do the tubing we just come in and pour so you're gonna have to either do the tubing yourself or hire a heating guy to do the tubing but this is the basic process guys so again check this out if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet please go down there and hit subscribe now i come out with two videos a week all about doing concrete stuff thanks for watching we'll see you on the next one guys [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 38,137

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: pWXG9xVrEG0

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021