Concrete slab in seven hours or less

We poured our concrete slab this weekend and it was a huge success. If you want to watch the video click here.



Here's some key things that we did in order to prep the space for a seamless pour:

On the Tuesday night before the Saturday pour we marked where we wanted the four loads of gravel to go. This was important for us since we both have full time jobs we knew we probably weren't going to be able to leave to be there for the crushed gravel drop-off.

And it worked! Here's the four piles, just like we wanted.

After we installed the concrete forms we reinforced each board with two 3' steel stakes to make sure they didn't "blow out".

We wrapped each post in tar paper to keep the concrete from sticking to the post. If the concrete were to stick to the post, when it settled, it would most likely crack.

We used duplex nails to help with the prying off of our form boards.

We plan for this barn to be a 2 horse barn so we didn't lay concrete in the stall portion (it's really bad for their legs). We used 2" x 6" for these and reinforced with steel stakes again.

We dug out the area along the edge in order to reinforce (less gravel and more concrete equals stronger edge). This was especially important to do on the lips we plan on driving over to get into the barn.

Here's what I carved into the pad. I didn't want to write something like Rachael loves Nick because this house is an investment and should we sell it I highly doubt someone is going to want that on their garage floor. But, I had to personalize it a little. This is a totally side note but when Mr. Nick designed my engagement rink (really designed it, drew it on a piece of paper had a mold cast and everything) he drew an infinity in the side that is filled with purple sapphires. I think it's especially cool because his engineering homework from the Academy has little infinity signs on it ... practice does make perfect!

The other thing we did, which we haven't done before, was pay for help. Mr. Nick put a craigslist add up for a skilled concrete pourer and Joe answered. He was only $200 for the whole day and provided invaluable expertise, not to mention his tools. We did rent the compactor, one come-along (the thing that looks like a rake), and the power trowel, but he provided everything else. It took 26 yards of concrete to fill our 36' x 48' space (minus the two horse stalls). We scheduled the three trucks for 30 minutes apart which provided the perfect amount of overlap (again, had we not had Joe this probably would have been to close together). We started early (first truck arrived at 7:30 but we were there at 6:30) which was also smart since the Pacific Northwest is in a bit of a heat wave right now hitting the upper 90s, reinforcing the adage, concrete waits for no one ... it will dry whether you're ready for it or not.  Thankfully, we were ready!

Song Credit: Discovery "So Insane". We love them. If you want to hear their other song we've done a video to check out our Conduit Loop Line video from laying our power cable.


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