Stamped Concrete Masterclass : form, pour, stamp & seal

today i'm going to show you how we stamp this concrete slab which is going to become the floor of a screened porch one of our other crews put these forms up and they put the gravel in and while we're waiting on the truck we're just checking the grade to make sure we have at least four inches of concrete we're doing this by running a string line across the top of the forms and we're measuring down from the string just to make sure it's four inches [Music] in the holes that you see around the outside of the slab those are just pier holes and the posts for the porch roof are eventually going to sit on each of those pier holes and once we finish the grade and the whole thing is four inches we're going to start putting rebar in the slab this isn't specified by an architect and it's not part of the building code it's just something that i like doing and that way if the concrete ever cracks we know that the rebar is going to hold it together and keep the crack from opening up and this is one interesting detail about the formwork on this project this is a screen porch with an exterior stoop and we wanted to pour this all at one time so the way that we're going to do this is that we ripped our forms on a 45 degree angle so that when we're stamping this concrete our stamps can actually get under that exterior form and stamp right up to the screen porch this porch is 16 by 20 so it's too wide for us to be able to strike off the entire porch at one time so we're gonna put a metal stake in the middle of this pad that's level with the outside forms right here good spot and then once we pour the concrete we'll be able to strike it off by placing the strike board on the forms on one side and then we'll use the metal stake that's in the middle of this pad on the other side of the strike board yeah that's fine this job was formed with two by twelves and that's just a little bit too thick to trust the two by four stakes to hold these forms up perfectly straight because a lot of times when the way the concrete hits the back of these forms it'll either cause the forms to bow or cause them to lean out so while we're waiting on the concrete truck to get here i just found some scrap two by fours and i'm making some kickers to hold these forms upright once the way the concrete hits them we're pouring a 3 500 psi concrete mix today most people like to pour concrete with pea gravel but i always like to request a mix that has 57 gravel in it and 57s are just a little bit bigger than pea gravel i personally think it's easier to pour and float when you use 57s and i don't really see a difference between the two once it's time to stamp them i always pour steps first on any project and what that does is it gives the concrete a few minutes to set which helps to keep the concrete in the top pad from flowing into the bottom pad once we pour the top i didn't add any water this concrete mix today because when you add an excessive amount of water to the concrete it increases the likelihood that it could crack so this is a little stiffer than we would normally pour something but this pad is not very big so we're gonna go with it we're just trying to rake the concrete out and we're getting as close as we can to the top of the forms it takes a little bit of experience and it takes a good eye to do this so we're trying to make our way through it get as close as we can and then as we're pouring the concrete we're always going to stop and reach down and grab the rebar and pull it up into the concrete mix because we want the rebar to be in the top half of the concrete so the whole point of all this is to make sure that the concrete is level with the top of our forms so to do that up against the house we put a chalk line on the brick that's level with the forms so i'm going to go along the edges of the house i'm using a ham float and i'm floating the concrete to make sure that it's perfectly level with that chalk line that we put on the brick and then later on you're going to see me with a strike board and i'm going to strike the concrete off to the top of the forms and my strike board will be on the wooden forms on one side and then on the other side the strike board will sit on top of the concrete that i just floated by hand up against the house [Music] so this is the part of the project where my strike board really isn't long enough to span across the entire pad and our solution for this is you can see shaffer in the middle of the screen there he is hand floating around the metal pin that we put in earlier in the day and we're going to take our strike board and we're going to strike the concrete off on top of the forms on the left side of the screen and on top of the pin on the right side of the screen and what that's going to do it's going to give us a level section of concrete that we're going to be able to use to strike the rest of this pad off on both sides of that level section of concrete [Music] we're going to start floating this pad now we like to run a hand float around the edges and what a float does is it just pushes the gravel down and brings the cream to the top we also like to run an edger pretty early in the process and all the edger does is make a round over on the sharp corner of the concrete it just helps to make the edges look really clean now i'm running a bull float across the entire pad i'm using a four foot wide craft tool bull float and this one has a easy tilt head on it which means that you put these poles into that easy tilt head and when you twist the poles it pivots the bull float so that it's easy to pull back to you you don't have to lift the pole way up and down to push it forwards and backwards i'll leave a link to this bull float and all the other tools that we're using in this video in the description down below i always get a bucket or two of concrete out of the truck once we're finished pouring the concrete and do it for situations just like this and you can see calvin he threw a few shovels of concrete in a low spot and i just use the float to float the mount level we're going to use color hardener to color the concrete today and the reason we're doing that is because the homeowner picked out a color that is lighter than natural gray concrete and the best way to color concrete a lighter color than natural gray concrete is to throw a color hardener on the surface and as an added bonus color hardener actually makes the concrete a lot harder than if you were to just trowel regular concrete so it's actually a better surface too once the concrete is covered with a color hardener we're just going to run the bowl float across the entire pad one more time it's pretty warm when we were doing this so we're not going to wait very long after we get this floated as soon as we finish we're going to throw another coat of color hardener across this entire pad and then we're going to run our trowel over it like you're bowling i know that's what i try to look like let's see your best thoughts troy what let's see your best throw make it look cool [Music] color hardener can be really hard to work in the concrete because it really tends to dry the surface out so troy's gonna mix up a product called increte delay and what this is is the finishing aid that slows down the set time on the surface of the concrete so we're going to use the increase delay to help wet out that color hardener and we're going to trowel it into the surface and hopefully that'll buy us a little bit of extra time to stamp the concrete there's always a few spots that the big trial won't quite reach so we're going to hit those all with a hand trowel and then if you look up against the house you can see the color hardener is kind of rough right up against the brick so i'm going to crawl out there on knee boards and hand trial everything against the brick and this is one thing i really don't like about color hardener it's just hard to get every corner and every spot in this pack colored so you can see right here in this corner up against where the fireplace is on this house there's just not any color in the corner so we're going to stop and throw a little bit more color hardener in that spot and then i'm going to go back out and trial into the surface and now we'll actually be ready to stamp the concrete so [Music] yeah so we're done this is it wonderful now we're going to broadcast a powder release onto the entire surface this is a release agent that's going to keep our stamps from sticking to the wet concrete and it's also going to provide a secondary color in the finished product this is where i showed you earlier that we cut that form on a 45 degree angle we did this so that this stamp could slide up under that form and we can stamp all the way to the edge of that upper pad [Music] we're going to use a flexible stamp to finish up this small pad we do that because we can bend it and get all the way to the edge of the forms and then when we stamp up against the upper level we can curl that stamp up and get really close to the upper level so we have less trim work to do we're going to start the main pad in the corner where we can line our stamps up with the forms and that way we know that the pattern will be square with the patio and then we're going to line all the stamps up with that one and we're gonna work our way across the pad we're really starting at a good time the concrete is firm enough for us to be able to walk up there but it's not so hard that we have to use the tamper to tamp the stamps into place this is actually a new set of stamps we just got these for this job they're called notched asher slate by increased systems once we got to about the middle of this pad it started getting to be where the concrete was a little bit too hard for us to tamp it with our feet so we got the tamper out and started tamping the rest of the stamps [Music] we're using flexible stamps on the edges and these stamps will bend enough to where we can bend them up the wall so that the pattern will be able to reach pretty close to the edge and then once we move the stamp troy is going to come behind us with what we call a texture skin and this is just a stamp that has the texture of the slate but it doesn't have any of the lines on it and he uses that texture skin to put texture on the concrete that reaches all the way up to the wall and then he takes an s tool and a hammer and he uses that to extend the lines of this pattern to where they reach all the way to the wall all right real quick before i finish the video i just want to let you know that i've been working on courses that cover a lot of the things that i show in these videos so if you want to learn more from us it'll be the first link in the description down below this is the next day and the first thing we have to do is strip the forms yeah it fell off this might be a little tricky once the forms are removed we're going to rinse off the bulk of the release powder from the surface [Music] [Music] water never really gets enough release off so we're putting a mixture of water and muriatic acid into a pump sprayer we spray it onto the surface and we scrub it with the broom to try to get most of the release off if you leave too much of the darker gray color on the surface it can act as a bond breaker which can cause the sealer to peel [Music] after going over this one with acid and the broom we decided there's still too much release on the surface so we went over the entire pad one more time [Music] like i said earlier this is going to be the floor of the screen porch so the outside edge will be visible for a few inches between the walls and the ground so we're mixing up some of the color hardener with resin and water and we're going to trowel this on the sides of the concrete slab we didn't really measure anything for this we're just using approximately half resin and half water we're mixing it to a fairly stiff consistency so that it will stick to the sides without running off troy is going to get the material on the sides with his hand and i'm going to come behind him with the trowel and smooth it all out once we finish the sides we're going to let that cure overnight and we'll be back tomorrow to finish this project up hey what's up my name is tim with decorative concrete virginia if you're enjoying this video at all it helps me out a lot if you hit the like button down below and if you want to see more like this hit the subscribe button [Music] this is the third day on this project and now we're ready to seal it up first we take a chisel and scrape down all the smalled ridges where the concrete squeezed up between the stamps we always seal the vertical edges first for some reason if you don't seal them first the sealer on the top can cause visible drip marks down the sides and once the sides are sealed we're ready to seal the patio [Music] we're using a solvent-based clear sealer today we're just trying to put on as thin of a coat of sealer as possible we're going to let that dry for about an hour and then we're going to do the whole thing one more time [Music] i make a lot of videos like this one so if you've been enjoying this it would be great if you'd hit the subscribe button i've also been making courses that teach you some of the things that we do in a lot more detail if you want more information about that i'll leave a link in the description down below and if you have any questions at all about this process leave a comment down below and i will try to get back with everyone i also made a video about stamp concrete last year we did a flagstone pattern and a wood plank pattern in my office i'll put a link on the screen if you want to check that video out thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: TimDCVA

Views: 16,482

Keywords: stamped concrete, stamped concrete patio, decorative concrete, stamped concrete porch, wood look concrete floors, flagstone, concrete porch, concrete patio, concrete forms, form concrete, integral color, color hardener, diy concrete, diy patio, how to pour a concrete patio, how to stamp concrete, how to pour concrete, how to pour a concrete slab, stamping concrete, how to pour stamped concrete, colored concrete, concrete stamps, concrete wood, stamped concrete walkway

Id: 4ubVCXNFOJk

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021