Transcription
Today we're going to do the biggest dry pour we've ever done. We're going to take 84 bags of concrete and turn it into a slab the easiest way possible. Oh, and we have a secret [Music] ingredient.
All right guys, I'm not going to bore you with all the prep work. It got crazy, but I'm just going to show you a few clips and then we're going to jump right into it. If you want to see it, go check out the Crocker Life. It was truly sketchy. I thought I was going to hit the grain bin, but let's get this form built. We know it's going to be a 10 by 16, so we just went ahead, threw the boards down, and then we're going to go ahead and square it up with the fence. Make it look good. Now we'll go ahead and stake it all up, level it out, be good to go. [Music] [Music] That could be any better.
Now that the forms are square and ready, we wanted to go ahead and level out the dirt. So I put a string across the top and I used a board to make sure it was level underneath. I would just take a hoe, move the dirt, use the board, level it out, rinse and repeat, repeat, I guess. Not rinse and repeat. This is a dry pour. We're not using water just yet, but we need to pack in the dirt. And I used a bucket to show you guys, use what you got, but this is going to work a lot better if you have a tamping bar. Go and use that. Pack it in good, and I think you'll be solid. It's a workout, just prepare, get ready.
We decided to do rebar about 2 feet on center just to strengthen it up a bit. A lot of people people don't use rebar, but better safe than sorry. Ready for concrete. This is the part you guys have been waiting for. We used 84 bags. We ended up moving over 6,000 pounds of concrete. It was a lot of work, but it's worth it in the end.
All right guys, so you saw us bring in 42 bags, and then we have another 42 bags. This is going to be over 80 bags of concrete to do this dry pour. It's a lot. So what we're going to do right now is go through, get all the sticks and leaves. That's the worst part about doing this right now in fall. The good thing is, temperature-wise, it's great. As far as everything falling off is terrible, but that's also a good thing of doing a dry pour. It doesn't matter. We could take breaks, we can clean it out, we can do whatever we want before we add water. Biggest dry pour we've ever done. We've got this.
All right guys, so this is what you've been waiting for. It's time to bust bags. Luckily, it rained and it packed the dirt in, but I do think we're going to get moisture from the bottom and the top. So I think we're going to have to somewhat work quicker, cuz once the bottom gets wet, it's going to start to harden. And then you guys know dry pour, you uh start on the top and then let it dry and then it goes down. Maybe, or maybe not. This will be the secret weapon. Get the ground wet. We'll tell you guys. So what we're going to do, we're going to go and start busting them, and then once we get enough powder in there, we'll go and lift the rebar. That way we don't have to have anything holding them up. I think this will work on [Applause]. Just go behind me and kind of level it out a little bit. It don't have to be perfect cuz we have to pull that rebar through. Yeah, like I thought, first when we were pouring it, I was like, oh, we're going to need more. Yeah. Now, I mean, it'll still take a lot to level it out, but I'll be curious how much.
All right, so now that we leveled it just good enough, we're going to go through, grab that rebar and bring it up to the top, and then we're going to pack it in. I think this way it'll help get that rebar in the middle and then also be able to pack everything in. Hopefully we didn't mess up by doing the rebar on the bottom and then picking it up. We'll find out. Yeah, if you can just. All right, put it down there. There we go. Okay. All right, so as you guys could tell, it is on top now. What we're going to do is level it out as good as we can with the rake again. Pack it in lightly, just to get in all the spots. We don't want gaps or anything. So we're going to lightly do it without pushing the rebar through. I think this will help. [Applause]
All right guys, I I don't know if that really did much, but I feel like it's going to pack it in all the way around wherever we need it to pack in. So we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come in and just start filling it up and screeding it as we go. I think this will be the final pass. I don't know how many bags we're going to use, but we bought 88, 84 of them, I don't remember. It's a lot. [Applause] [Applause] Got slide it back and forth and then also this way. [Applause] [Applause] [Music]
All right guys, I'm not even going to lie, this was the absolute hardest part of all of it. We had to throw the extra bags in, use the board and push back all the extra concrete while trying to keep it as level as possible. Danielle, she worked as hard as she could, but I think her upper body strength just wore her out today after busting all the bags, moving concrete, and then now this. It was tough. About halfway through, it was burning my arms up. The good thing is, is when you do a dry pour, you can take breaks. So don't worry, as long as it's not going to rain or be overnight and get some condensation, you'll be all [Music] right.
Once we got down to one to two layers left on the pallet, we were getting a little worried. We really hoped that we would have enough concrete. We just had to keep our fingers crossed and hope it' work [Music] out. I know you guys can't tell, we have one bag left out of two entire pallets. Oh, we're talking down to the nitty-gritty, but that's the beauty of dry pour. If we happen to need another one, which I hope we won't, we can go get it and we're not behind. [Music]
All right, so down to we have half a bag left to fill in any spots. Unfortunately, I already see a stick in the middle. It's it's where we wanted it, but trees suck. So we're going to take this corner. Try. I don't know what if that's a uh hand edger. We're going to take this and we're going to go ahead and try to round the edge off. I've never done this and I don't know how well it's going to work, but people on the internet make it look easy, so we'll see. Stick it in there. You don't want to push too hard. And as you're going this way, I'm keeping the top up so it's not digging into it. I don't know how well. And then whenever we come back, we lift the back side up a little bit. Definitely, I don't think it's going to be a perfect round corner, but it'll definitely uh be better than a hard edge. So I think it'll be all right.
Now that we got the uh edge pretty good, it's not perfect, it's hard to do with the dry pour, but it looks pretty good. So we got this roller on a handle and we're going to go back and we're going to roll it real light and try to get a nice smooth finish because this will be our final finish. So we're going to take our time. If we mess up, we'll do it again, we'll do it again, we'll do it again. That's the benefit of a dry pour. [Applause] [Applause] That's pretty f. This is a secret weapon. [Applause] [Applause] [Applause]
All right, so let's do this again. Now we should get a really good [Music] corner. All right, so I used one bag, not even a full bag. I did the top layer. If I would have thought about it before, I probably would have put like a good inch of just Portland on top. But I spent about 45 minutes smoothing it out the best I could with the roller. The roller would get clogged up and I'd bang it out and do it again, do it again, do it again. I did it off camera, so now it's time to mist it and see what it does.
All right, so it's just my luck, the misting setting doesn't work. We just bought this, so I put it on a flat setting and I'm going to shoot it from real far away. Oh, I hope this doesn't just mess it up. You know, in our luck, it will. Let's see what happens. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a
All right guys, it's been 24 hours. We let it completely dry, so let's go ahead and take the forms off and we'll show you what it's looking like. All right guys, at first glance, I'm very happy with this. Uh, the forms came off super easy. All the edges look really good. They're definitely not rounded cuz once uh you use the roller, it pushes it back in and I'm not really worried about that. What is pretty crazy, it's been 24 hours and it's still wet. I think that has to do with uh the weather and everything, but it does look like it's pretty good. I could walk on it, it's fine. We're just going to let it dry. It's going to take a little bit longer. So I'm going to take advantage of that and knock the edge off and smooth the edge all the way around while it's still a little wet. At least I think I can. What's up, buddy?
All right, so I went ahead and just cleaned it all off. I spray this water. We're going to let it sit. Since it is cold, we need to let this sit for a little bit longer. I think in the end, it's going to pay off.
All right guys, it has been, I think 48 hours at this point. It's still not completely dry, which I did spray it down last night and it has been down into the uh low 40s at night and it's, I think 56 degrees right now, and I think yesterday was about the same. So uh, it is a little bit um wet, but you can tell it's starting to dry out. So that's why it's a couple of different colors, but I am actually very, very happy with it being a dry pour. Yeah, for what we're doing, this is 100% all we need. Yeah, we actually went and got materials, almost all of it, and we're going to build something right here. I think you guys are going to love it. And also, oh yeah, but I think you guys are going to love it. And also, we are getting all our house building supplies as well. This is a huge uh time for us right now. It took forever to get everything we wanted, but hopefully, um, you guys are ready and hopefully this helps you guys if you're trying to do a uh slab on your own. I think we saved on the slab alone roughly $1,000 on the low end, on the low end. So don't be scared to do it yourself in cold weather. Just know it's going to take a little bit longer to dry, but for what we're doing, this is perfect.