This Is The Easiest Type Of Concrete Slab To Do If You're A Beginner.

hey everybody good morning it's the middle of December it's still we got some snow last night as you can see it's freezing now it's probably 19 degrees right now we're still pouring concrete outside got a lot of work left to do everything's outside though so it's going to come to a halt here pretty soon this guy had that covered this covered with blankets so there's no Frost in this they actually had a ground heater on it so it kept the sub base nice and warm overnight um concrete just shows up it's about 8 30. it's about eight in the morning actually we got two ten yard is coming uh concrete's good and hot so it should be good and he's going to cover this over right after it's just just a mobile home pad so all we got to do is pour it both load it and then we're out of here that's it for us so it should be a pretty easy one as long as everything goes well with a creek truck doesn't freeze out so we're gonna get it backed up get going [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign hey guys Mike here with everything about concrete so what do you think you think it's too cold to be pouring concrete out here today let me know what you think down in the comments now if you're gonna pour concrete when the temperatures are freezing you know you gotta you got a number one site prep is the key these guys you can see the excavator away in the background these guys were just here you know the last two or three days digging this outside out putting in the gravel they added a little bit of crush rock this morning because they were a little bit low on one side but the key for them was they kept the the subgrade protected with those blankets you know at all times that they weren't working on it so they would they would put the gravel in level it out compact it and if they were done for the day they'd cover it with blankets before it froze and that's really you know that's the number one key to doing concrete when it's freezing like this um and then nope just lost my mag the uh the second key is having the Right Mix Design you know you got to uh you gotta order the right concrete so you want you want to you typically you want a concrete with a high cement content because the the higher the cement content the more heat the concrete is going to generate as it cures and then you got to be able to have hot water in the concrete with temperatures are this low and otherwise you know if the concrete shows up at 55 degrees or so with just cold water and it's gonna it's gonna cool off way too fast and start to freeze you know when it's that when you're starting out with water temperatures at 130 or 140 degrees at the plant and then they mix that really hot water with the Aggregate and the sand and all that we end up with a temperature right here on the job side at about 70 degrees so when you're pouring especially when you're pouring six inches thick it gives you some time to really work with it and let it cure up before it cools down too fast so today today you know we just got to get this unloaded get it spread out get it screeted get it both floated and then that's going to be the finish for this because like I said they're putting a mobile home right on this so I a single wide I don't know you guys call mobile home or single wide trailer is going to set right on top of this in 99 of it's going to be covered with the you know with the home itself so it's basically just a base for the for the home and we don't do it we don't do a ton of these anymore I used to do a lot of them in the past um double wide homes single wide like this uh it just doesn't there doesn't seem to be as many going in now as there was because there was way back 20 25 years ago but when we do do them this is basically how we do them I mean some guys some contractors will do them with will throw some wire mesh in there uh we're gonna end up putting a double row of rebar around the outside edge we'll wet set that because there's nothing really to tie it to here but for the most part you know we'll just use the fiber mesh we'll use the the high strength concrete with the fiber mesh in it as long as the sub base is compacted really well and it's not going to settle you know we never really have a problem with these cracking or breaking up it's just it really depends on the sub base if that's done right the concrete's just not going to crack all up on its own so um you're having a good concrete mix is a is a big important part of that too but for us you know the three of us meet Darren and Luke you know we'll get this is two trucks this one's a ten and a half yard or the second one is going to be a 10 yarder we also got a little pad going in right over there where the excavator is now matter of fact he's digging the hole for it right now that's going to be for the propane tank uh it's going to be an underground propane tank so you'll see how we're just how they put in a pad for one of those but for us the three of us it's just like let's get this down get it screeted get it both loaded as quick as we can because I don't know about you guys but when it's 19 degrees out and even with gloves on like I have right now my fingers my fingers start to freeze up on me my boots my feet stay pretty warm because we're walking in the concrete that's kind of warm um and my body's not too too bad I guess as long as the wind isn't blowing it's usually just my fingers what bothers you the most in the cold I mean or do you even do you not even live in the cold so you don't have to worry about it let me know down in the comments for me like I said it's my fingers so we're getting we're trying to get this thing dumped out as quick as we can but I mean you can really only go so fast so we're gonna we're gonna Matt we'll you'll see here in a minute we're going to mag float the edges right after we wet set the the bars and then we'll get this truck out of the way so he can start washing out because basically if you leave if you leave the concrete sitting for even a minute it freezes right to the Chute same with that little that little cold shoot we call a kosher six foot kosher we use to start with if we don't wash that right up like it's sitting I can see it sitting out there now that concrete's freezing right to it right now um I mean the hot water from the truck we get to use the hot water to wash stuff with so it does it does still clean the Frozen concrete off the tools but it's much better if you can just rinse it off right after you use it then it comes off a lot faster and you can see a little bit of steam coming off the concrete I'd like to see honestly I'd like to see a little bit more that would mean the concrete is even even what uh warmer or hotter but just seeing just seeing some steam is a good sign that means that means we got warm concrete going down on the ground when we get done you know today when we get done with this we're going to put those blankets right back on it even though the concrete's still going to be pretty soft we want to try to hold in as much of that warmth as possible so this stuff starts to cure up and then the guy we're doing it for here his name's Jim he actually he actually got it all formed up for us and ready to go this is his place you know he's gonna he's gonna leave those blankets on for probably about a week before he gets the mobile home moved on try to let the concrete get up to you know if it's for 4 000 psi concrete you probably want to let it get up to about 2500 or 3000 psi at least before before you move to the home on it and that'll happen that'll happen in a week if he keeps those blankets on so it's not like it's not a crazy fast process to get this dumped out and if you're thinking well geez that stuff you started with first where you first pulled that out of the truck it's been sitting there for quite a while wouldn't that be setting up on you if the concrete was so warm well I mean it could it could be but you know if you if you're experienced and you do this a lot in these in these temperatures and you use the same concrete company all the time with pretty much the same mix you know you got a really good idea of how much time you have before you got to get it screeted you know before it starts setting up on you so it makes it more difficult to work with so we know we know we have enough time to get this truck dumped out even if it takes us 10 to 15 minutes to get it dumped out then we know we have enough time to get back and still get it screeted and both loaded before we start struggling with it all right so Darren and Luke they're wet set in the rebar around the edges just you know for something like this with no wire or rebar mat in it to tie anything to this is the easiest way we found to do this and still keep it right about in the middle of the slab so you know Luke's pushing it down two or three inches get it right in the middle we'll keep it an inch or two away from the edges and you know we'll keep them bars four to six inches apart so basically they're just help help uh strengthen up the edge a little bit when they go to back the trailer on it and if the slab does want to crack you know it'll help hold it together on the edges we've always done them this way I've done hundreds of them like this with no problems here in Maine so this is this is really the basic way that we do it six inches thick is a pretty standard thickness too for a mobile home pad up here in Maine this is really like in this town we're in no real building codes in this town some towns do have some pretty strict building codes on how to do it and what to do and even some of the mobile home companies will have their own uh standards or details on the slab but this particular one didn't so we're just doing them based on how we've done a lot of them in the past and again the homeowner this is for the homeowner himself he's an actual contractor he's a plumber but he he knows a lot about concrete too so we're doing it uh to what his spec is I mean it's it's his it's his place right here he owns it so Darren's just tuning in the concrete in it looks like we may have got it a little bit low in there sometimes that'll happen when you dump out a big long piece of concrete like this you run the risk of being a little high or a little bit low personally it's better to be a little bit high and want to pull it back than to be low and have to continually push it push it up to the screed one one nice thing you get to see right here where it's as close is that screed demon the the power Street here from mbw how smooth that leaves the surface and it's going to make it so easy to both float and what I'm doing you can see what I'm doing there running running the the power screen is I'm basically looking from one Edge to the other I just want to make sure my edges are both touching so the both edges of the screen are touching there and they're leaving that line they're leaving that line and if I if it if I see some of that line disappear that means one of the edges lifted up above where I mag my pad and that means I'm high there and if I see it dipping down too low then I know I'm holding it in one place too long and the screed is just kind of making a dip that's right about perfect right there as you can see I'm leaving a little bit of a line on both sides and you'll see when I go to Buffalo just how nice and flat this is going to be no no humps or dips or anything under the bow float well that's kind of what you're looking for right there and it leaves the the power screed leaves a pretty nice vibrated surface so it'll settle the aggregate just enough below the surface so it leaves a nice paste on it as you can see and when you go to both float that it's basically like both floating some smooth butter almost you can see Darren he's working hard to keep the concrete up behind me so I don't have to stop those guys and now Luke's going to step back push some up there that's probably the worst thing for the rakers is having to push mud back up it's it's definitely easier to pull it backwards as the guy's screeding look at how hard they're working compared to how hard I was working pulling that back now I'm running a bow float over it and I got a little piece of I don't know dirt or something Frozen to the bottom of the Bull Float so I had to scrape that off it was leaving a line once I get that off you can see as I run that bow float over it just how nice and smooth that is so I can basically just go up and back once and that'll be the finished surface for this now how can I tell it's flat well when you both load over something like this if it if The Bull Float runs if it runs smooth from edge to edge of The Bull Float if there's no little dip under it or lines or holes or if the edge of The Bull Float doesn't lift up and rise up and not leave a mark then you know you're flat so if you watch The Bull Float as I'm bull floating here from from one side up it's a four foot bow float so from one side to the other both ends are touching nice and flat there's Smooths in really nice Under The Bull Float so that tells you right there it's really flat under that thing I don't have to come back and shovel some in and fill in areas and if you have to do that with a buffalo you know your screen needs a little bit more fine-tuning or you got to slow down your rakers need to be a little bit better or something but um right now I'm going around like a sewer pipe in the middle so we get right up to the the pipe and then we angle we're going to angle the screen just a little bit to get one side go for a couple feet pick it up then I'll angle it and go the other way and that's kind of how we get around a pipe with a fiber screen like that look at the dog the dog's over there behind the other concrete jar going what the heck is going on it's too darn cold out here to be doing anything yeah you see how I'm going around that pipe and that's about as close as you can get to a pipe so then I'm just gonna go a couple feet then I'll have Luke just take his his rate and just kind of clean that up around that pipe a little bit for me so when I come to Buffalo it'll both float out nice and smooth yeah that's all it takes right there this first truck actually went quite a ways he did about two-thirds of this but that's kind of because we got we got two or three extra yards for another little pad we're doing here at the end so make sure you hang out and wait for that to see that the guy bought a 500 500 uh pound propane tank underground propane tank so the excavators back there he's digging out the hole down below the frost line which is a little bit below four feet and he's leveling that off a little bit and then the homeowner made like this little form we're gonna pour a couple yards right in that so he can and flatten that out so he can set that propane tank down in there and then they'll just bury the propane tank and it'll be right out of sight I'm going back just magging out my lines all right one truck down 10 yards move on to the second I think is a froze I can't feel them oh my God I'm gonna make it I'm gonna get by the struggles are boring in Maine in the winter I guess I've yet to find a really good way to keep your hands warm while you're working outside in the cold like this and you're touching you know Ice Cold Steel like what Darren's touching on the Chute or even the rakes or The Bull Float um and you know you really don't want gloves that are too thick because you got to be able to move your fingers in there and have some type of control with your fingers so I don't know if you guys know something that I don't just let me know but nothing nothing I've found even those I'm wearing pretty thick gloves today too for from what I normally wear it's just I don't know it just doesn't work very good so there's some secret type of glove out there or some hand warmer you guys let me know the second load the second load here felt like it was even warmer than the first load which is kind of weird because when they batch the concrete out the first the first 10 yards or so of of uh material aggregate anyway and sand are actually inside the inside the garage and then after they empty those bins into the first truck then they got to reload them with with the material that's been sitting outside so typically the first Loadout of the plant is the warmest but this one definitely had it was warmer you could just tell on your boots and you can see the steam coming off it it was it was steaming quite a bit more than the first truck was and get these edges man I'm gonna have Luke take over with the power screen because my fingers were too cold I couldn't hold on to the handles of it sometimes I gotta take my fingers right out of the fingers in the glove and just kind of make a fist inside the glove for a minute and then that one helps warm my fingers back up then I could put them back in the finger Slots of the glove I've tried heated gloves the trouble with heated gloves you know the battery powered heated gloves is they're just too bulky and if you get your if you get if your hand is moist at all and you try to pull your hand out of those heated gloves it it kind of pulls the liner right out with it and that just makes a mess inside those those gloves I'm wearing right now are about the thickest I can wear and you can see the the fingers on them or even the fingers are way too big makes hard makes it hard to hold the mag sometimes when I when I rake when somebody else is running the vibrator screen you know my most important part of the raking is is right along the edge right there where I am right now is keeping that nice and flat as flat as I can possibly get it without getting low so the hardest part about screeding is is uh keeping your two edges down nice and flat so if the raker can keep the concrete down nice and flat right there it just makes fiber screen it's so much easier but we didn't end up getting too much concrete in there which was a bonus you know we didn't have to shovel any out if anything we might have had to scoop a shovel full back in there just to fill up that one little piece and now you can watch as I run this Bull Float over it just how flat it is under the bow float again if there were any issues if there were any humps or dips they would show up right now that's exactly what you want it to look like under a bullfro when you're pulling that Bull Float all right that's done everything's just freezing on contact it's so cold that concrete won't freeze for a little bit but he's got to get it covered within probably 30 minutes or so half 30 minutes to an hour for stash to freeze it was pretty warm on our boots so I know the concrete temps were up around 70. now what we're doing is we got a little a little pad we got to pull for his propane tank they're gonna bury the propane tank in the ground so we put a pad in just to set it on it doesn't have to be anything special but it's gonna get this poured in the ground [Applause] [Music] so you can let it set out those just got the propane tank propane tanks right over there that green thing so we'll just get this dumped in here foreign [Applause] [Music] that's Jim right there the owner of the guy with the orange hat and I didn't check it out I didn't check the pad of the level but they did have a laser set up right up here up top you can't see it right this minute but so I'm assuming you know when Jim when Jim set the forms in there they checked it for level and got it you know as level as they needed it to be if not perfectly level there will be some bolts that Luke's gonna put in here though you know they can shim under it that is a laser you can see it way back there in the background um I mean they could shim it to get it level if they needed to so I'm sure they got it really really close and again we're below the frost line here that's why we can just put this pad right in on the dirt so they're below the frost line here in Maine is usually around 48 inches four feet and it looks like the pad itself I mean if Luke stood up he Luke's about not quite six feet but almost six feet tall so it's a boat right even with his head so they're down about six feet right here and again nothing special on the Finish they bolt that that propane tank down get the get the get the gas line run and then they just they just bury it that's it you won't be able to see it other than just a tiny little piece sticking out of the top here okay that's all they need for that just something to set that tank on right there oh we're gonna get out of here we're freezing like I said they're still in the teens this morning sounds all Frozen again guys thanks for watching they're covering that up right now as you can see thanks for watching guys we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 124,009

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: MTkpQVc9JoA

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023