Concrete Basement Slab - Very Good Job

Hi, I'm Tim Carter, AskTheBuilder.com, and check it out. They poured part of the slab this morning

Looks pretty good. Remember, this is not my job. If you see anything wrong, not me. And if you

discover something new in the video, consider clicking that Thanks text link

at the bottom or underneath the video and realize every single dollar that I

raise I plow back into the channel to make more videos for you faster. Let's

take a look at the slab. Well the slab is now done on the main part of the house

The slab here in the garage did not get poured, alright? But I was here after it

was poured and the finisher was using the mechanical trowel and he was doing a really

good job, but he was busy and he put an excellent finish on it. This finish is nice and smooth

and I can't say enough good things. He really did a good job and you always look at the edges

and the edges look fantastic. Really, really a fine job. They did a fantastic job

But here's something they did right after the slab couldn't have been four hours, five hours old

And see all these lines in the slab They cut all the control joints That what they called And it looks like they created a grid where each one of these squares kind of like a crossword puzzle giant crossword puzzle

is about 10 feet square. And that's perfect. And what's really important is these cracks

both directions. I measured it, and I used a shim, and it's about one inch deep, and that's exactly

what it's supposed to be, so I was really impressed that he did it correctly. You're supposed to make

these cracks, or these joints, one-fourth the thickness of the slab, all right? So if it's a

four-inch thick slab, which this is, basically, that means the control joints should be one inch

deep. And just like we thought, you can see down here, the concrete was poured almost up to the top

of the treated lumber plate. And here's the most important thing. Remember, we talked about the big

six by six. It's right here. It's in place. And I think it's going to stay in place. I just can't

believe it's going to be pulled out, but we're going to find out. Maybe, maybe they're going to

take this thing out after they, or when, you know, before they go to pour this other slab, but I don't

know if they're going to do that. I don't know why they would have chalked the line on it. You can see

they chalked a line here so that doesn really make sense to me and also it just nothing about this 6x6 makes sense to me at all We going to know more about this when they pour this slab which I think is going to be two days from now But bottom line he did a really good job

One other thing you need to know is, and I don't know if he did it, I don't think he did

but it's because there's forecasted rain tomorrow. And when you pour a slab like this, you really want to put curing compound on it

A curing compound, it's a liquid. Sometimes it has like a whitish cast to it

That eventually goes away. And think of it as just liquid plastic

And what it does is it stops the water in the concrete from evaporating

You don't want the water to evaporate too rapidly. That water is needed for the Portland cement to hydrate

And that hydration chemical reaction takes place over months and months and months and even years

It's really, really important to either A, cover the slab with sheets of plastic

and make sure you put rocks or something down so the plastic doesn't blow away

or keep it wet with a sprinkler, which wastes a lot of water

or spray a curing compound on it. Very, very important. And also, remember the control joints

What those are for, concrete shrinks as it hydrates or as it gets hard

And it shrinks 1 16th of an inch for every 10 feet that you pour

10 horizontal feet. And what it does if you don put those control joints in which are basically there to control where it cracks then the concrete will crack randomly And you see that frequently on big slabs where they didn

put the control joints in or they didn't cut them deep enough. So the control joints are there to

control where it cracks. They're trying to encourage the concrete to crack where they did the saw cuts

and it's even though you put those in sometimes you can still get a random crack but guess what

it's easy to fix those you just have to wait a year or two and then get some basically some

regular wall grout I would just get gray wall grout that matches the concrete and you grout the crack

once the concrete has shrunk as much as it's going to shrink and that can take up to a year or two to

do I hope you discovered something new remember if you need help with your job I do phone coaching

Happy to call you on the phone. And if you discovered something new, go ahead and please click the thanks text link under the video

And realize that every single dollar I raise, I plow back into the channel to make more videos for you faster

I'm Tim Carter, AskTheBuilder.com. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AskTheBuilder.com