Site Prep / Setting Forms:

This is video sample number 1 of 6 from the DoItYourselBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". We'll show you step by step how to complete each stage of this project. Remember, these are just short video samples from the full project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete", to check out the entire video project, go to DoItYourselBuilder.com.

Alright, here we're going to be pouring a 12 x 20 patio. We've already removed the deck, as you can see. We're going to be putting up the forms so we know where the grade will be set. We've brought in 3/4 minus that's sitting in the trailer. What I'm going to do is basically show you step by step how to set up the forms and get ready to pour concrete.

What we need to do, is make sure this form is square with the house, so what we're going to do is pin this form onto this stake so we'll be able to swing it. To get it square to the building, what you're going to want to measure out is from the wall. Measure out six feet and make a mark, then from your form over make another mark at 8 feet, which I've done here. Then, you measure across between the two.

Put a nail in, put you're chalk line or you're string line, whichever one you want, on the nail. Take it down to the other end, and put another nail in. You want to keep your board nice and straight.

As you move the end of the board, you can see that it goes in and out. Keep it nice and straight. We're going to make a mark on the stake, at the top and the bottom of the board, we're also going to make a mark on this other stake, also on the top and bottom, and then we're going to pull those out.

Once we pull those out you can see, once the form is brought up to level, about right in there, we're going to need more gravel in some places then others. Here, we're at about 3" - 3 1/2", we're going to have to pull some of this dirt out of here. Right now I'm going to tap this stake in so we're know where we're supposed to be.

We're going to make sure this form boards straight here, so what I'm going to do is show you this quick little knot they use for doing concrete. You take a piece in one hand, and you just spin it, maybe ten or twelve times, and you've got a loop. You take the loop and you slip it over the top of the nail, and then you just pull on it until it keeps going tight. Pull it back, and then keep pulling it tighter. Once it's tight then you can just wrap it around the nail, keep it tight, and then it's on, and it's on without pulling a knot.

As you look down this, you'll see that the string line is perectly straight, but that it's away from the from. So that tells us that we need to move the form in.

Now we're just going to pull this form over, until it lines up with this string. You always want to make sure these stakes go in perfectly straight.

This has just been a short sample taken from the DoItYourselfBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". To purchase the full video, as well as the "Materials and Instructions" list, goto the bottom of the page.

Building Your Base:

This is video sample number 2 of 6 from the DoItYourselBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". We'll show you step by step how to complete each stage of this project. Remember, these are just short video samples from the full project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete", to check out the entire video project, go to DoItYourselBuilder.com.

If your base looks bad then you can check it in a couple other places, over by the wall you can have someone hold a chalk line against the string line. Also you want to make sure that when you're putting the rock in that you've got it kind of up on the form a little bit, because once you compact it, that's going to go down. You can see we're a little short here, we're going to shovel in there and around.

I built these footing here, when we're done they're going to be about 17 inches square. They're for a covered patio that they're going to put on. The posts will come down right here in the corner, 4 x 4 posts, and these will be an expanded footing for that. Later we'll show you how to put the rebar in.

Compacting:

Right now we've got our gravel in. We've got an inch above the bottom of the footing, and I'm watering it down. The reason we're watering it down is to help compact the gravel that we've put in here. You want to do this three or four times throughout the process, while you're compacting it, and while you're putting it in, just to help it get compacted as best as possible.

Alright, we've compacted half of this, and what you need to realise when you're compacting is, if the compactor is sinking down into the material, into your base, then your base isn't thick enough or it's not strong enough to hold the concrete. So you need to dig up any soft spots of soil underneath, or put more rock in. If you continue to go, you'll end up with a muddy mess, and then your concrete will fail because your sub-material wasn't sufficient. So, if you're getting an inch of compression it's perfect; 1/2 inch, great. If you don't get any at all that's even better. But most of the time when you're compacting you'll get a 1/2 inch, and that's what we've got here. So we're going to continue this pad across. We're going to turn the compactor and then we're going to go in the other direction. As soon as we're done with that then fill in the holes and do it again.

This has just been a short sample taken from the DoItYourselfBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". To purchase the full video, as well as the "Materials and Instructions" list, go to the bottom of the page.

Placing Rebar:

This is video sample number 3 of 6 from the DoItYourselBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". We'll show you step by step how to complete each stage of this project. Remember, these are just short video samples from the full project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete", to check out the entire video project, go to DoItYourselBuilder.com.

We've got it all compacted and we're basically going around and cutting all the stakes that were sticking up. Just real quick, all we do is we take a saw-sall all or a hand saw, and we, at a slight angle, cut them off.

Once those are all cut off it allows us to bring our screen boards across, I'll show you later, it allows us to slide over the top of these and not get caught up on them.

What you want to do, is you want to go down and buy these little dobies at pretty much any hardware store or concrete place. This little block, you want to get about an inch and a half, they have a little tie wire sticking out of them.

What you do with these is you lift your rebar up, and you slip it underneath there, then you just twist the little tie like a bread tie. Make sure the little ears are pointing down, wrap them around, bend them down, but they've got to point down. Or else you'll be putting your concrete in and they'll pop through the surface.

They don't have to be on every joint, about every four feet, just mainly as long as it holds the rebar up. Once we start pumping this, you'll be walking on the rebar wich will cause it to push down. If you don't have these dobies in here, your rebar will be laying on the ground, and then you might as well not even put it in. You've got to have the rebar completely immersed in the concrete, and almost in the center of the concrete. You don't want it too high, you don't want it too low.

You want the rebar not to go all the way to the outside of the footings, you want it at least 2 1/2" back. You don't want the rebar exposed to the outside elements so that it can rust, or it will rust into the concrete, and eventually fail.

You can do this without rebar, you'll have add fiber into the cement, and you can get that from a local company and add it on the job.

This has just been a short sample taken from the DoItYourselfBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". To purchase the full video, as well as the "Materials and Instructions" list, go to the bottom of the page.

Pouring Concrete:

This is video sample number 4 of 6 from the DoItYourselBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". We'll show you step by step how to complete each stage of this project. Remember, these are just short video samples from the full project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete", to check out the entire video project, go to DoItYourselBuilder.com.

...And then we've put a stake on top of another, that's actually called a "Screed Board". You can see here, it runs all the way across. We're going to pour this one strip all the way down, and as you can tell, the board hangs over and that allows us to slide it back and forth. There's plenty of space here on the other end to slide it, take a look at how the stake overhangs.

I'm making a mark right here, this will basically give us our joint lines. We're going to put one here and one on the other form. When we do our brake line down the center, we're going to use this as our marker, down there we have a mark on it, we're going to put a nail on the outside. Because once we've poured concrete over the top of the form, it makes your mark go away. Nail in a 16 or 8 penny nail, and you'll be able to tell, when you put your brake line in...

You can see here he's pumping the concrete mix in. He'll pump it right up close to the line. And that'll allow us to take the fresno, go across the surface there and get it level, and get it right up to the chalk line. The reason you want to do this is because you won't be able to float right up against the house, you'll want to use your hand float to get it nice and even right there.

Here you can see that we've got a Screed Board, it's basically a 2x4. You want to run it back and forth, right to left. If you get to a point where you miss something, or it starts to popcorn on you, you just gotta back up.

What we're doing here is we're just basically taking the trowel and pushing in the base of the concrete, pushing the concrete up to the line, and you're giving yourself a flat area here, keep your trowel nice and level.

This has just been a short sample taken from the DoItYourselfBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". To purchase the full video, as well as the "Materials and Instructions" list, go to the bottom of the page.

Concrete Finishing:

This is video sample number 5 of 6 from the DoItYourselBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". We will show you step by step how  to complete each stage of this project. Remember, these are just short video samples from the full project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete", to check out the entire video project, go to DoItYourselBuilder.com.

What we're doing now is, we have a Bull Float, you can rent these or buy one at a local concrete store. I believe they have them at Lowe's or Home Depot. You don't have to have one, but it makes it alot easier.

We've switched directions, we're coming in this way to pick up the lines that we left going the other way. Go out as far as you can.

What we're going to do is, once the concrete starts to set up, and you've given it enough time to bond to itself, and be able to hold itself into a form, we'll pull the step off and go out there on kneepads and we'll start to finish that step. We won't leave it like that, it won't look good.

It's looking really good, the wheather is not too hot. You never want pour when it's really hot. It takes the moisture out of the concrete and it'll go off on you and you'll never get it to the point you want it smooth, and it'll look terrible and you'll end up having to replace it. So unless you've got enough experience or helpers, try and pour in the 70 range, temperature wise. Definitely not when it's raining. When you're doing a broom finish like this, a little rains not too bad, because you can cover it and un-cover it, finish it, cover it back up, un-cover it, broom it and finish it and so on. But this application, we've got a pretty good day, right now we're just waiting for it to set up.

You never want concrete to get away from you, you always want to keep up with it. So I'm a little premature on my edging right now, but what you don't want to do is you don't want to get behind. When you're trowling out concrete you want to make sure you get your joints in on time. If you fall behind it's hard to get everything in on time. What I'm doing is just giving it a quick little edge, that way if I did get behind I'd know I had at least the edge started, and then I'll rake these lines in, and I'll show you how to do that.

So now as we're cutting this long joint all the way across, it's real important to get this joint nice and straight. So just keep working it until you get it nice and straight. Go all the way to the end, lift it up, and come on back.

Alright, so I've worked my way out here, this concrete's kind of setting up. There's alot of cream on the surface. I'm working on these steps right now. I'm going to edge them, I'm going to use a float to get this rock down and get it cleaned up, kind of get an edge on it. It's still pretty soft, I'll probably be able to pull this [form] off in another ten minutes.

I'm getting ready to pull these forms here. I pulled the stakes out; just used a hammer to pull the nails out. You want to tap on the front of [the form] and break it loose from the concrete, you want to tap it on the end, break it off from that end. That end is still on there, so I'm sliding sideways, but I've got that end on there so I can keep the concrete from falling off. You don't want to pull up, because you don't want to grab the top and pull it off.

Right now we're just going over the top of this, continuing to bring the cream to the surface as it dries. You want trowel over it four, even five times, getting enough cream to the surface, because when you're brooming this, all you're brooming is the cream, you don't want to move the rock. So if you have rock sitting at the suface, which makes it all look bumpy, you don't want that. What you want is a good 1/8^th of cream sitting at the top so when you broom over the top of it you're brooming only the Portland cement, not the rock. So continue to just trowel over the concrete. We've got our step all finished, we have to trowel it one more time. Right now we're just going back and forth, keep bringing the cream to the surface.

This has just been a short sample taken from the DoItYourselfBuilder.com project titled "How the Pros Pour Concrete". To purchase the full video, as well as the "Materials and Instructions" list, go to the bottom of the page.