Tag: Concrete construction techniques

ExhaustNotes Shed Slab Review: By The Numbers

I’ve finally finished the new floor in The Shed® at Tinfiny Ranch©. I didn’t really want to mix and pour the floor myself but events out of my control lead to that fateful decision. To understand how the floor ended up like it ended up you have to have an understanding of those aforementioned events.

The first thing everyone asks me is why didn’t I pour the floor first. It’s a valid question. The reason the shed went up on graded dirt had to do with time and money. Money was a problem because we had just bought Tinfiny ranch and our house budget allowed for a building or a slab, but not both.

Time was a problem because we were moving from a 3000 square foot rental house into a 600 square foot garage converted into a one bed, one bath home. All that junk from the big house had to go somewhere and renting a storage shed was out of the question. We were done renting crap.

We ended up buying a 30 X 50 Eagle Building for $13,000. Eagle buildings are the best square foot per dollar on the market and that price includes assembly on your land. The buildings are designed with a continuous steel sill that can be set up on bare ground as long as the ground is fairly even. No foundation needed.

The bad part about Eagle buildings is that they are not super heavy duty. They are a little stronger than a typical metal lawn building but not nearly as strong as a Mueller type building. Mueller buildings are very sturdy but cost twice as much as an Eagle and are delivered to your land on a series of pallets. You have to assemble the building yourself. Muellers also require a pre-poured slab with a foundation and all the attendant costs associated. I priced a 30 X 50 Mueller at $23,000. The foundation and slab was $26,000 from a local contractor. That $49,000 left you with a nice slab and numerous stacks of steel: you still had to build the building. I got a price of $6000 to assemble the Mueller from another local contractor.

Besides the fact that we couldn’t afford the Mueller and all that the Mueller involved, it would have been many months before we had storage for our junk. Three weeks after we bought the Eagle Building it was erected on Tinfiny Ranch and full of the junk we had dragged across country along with furnishings from the big rental.

I tried to get a local guy interested in pouring the shed floor but the job must have seemed too involved what with the building already in place and full of junk. I gave up for a year; just let the situation stay as is for a while. Then mice started burrowing under the edge of the building and wreaking havoc.

One of my Internet buddies is fond of saying, “Do it right or don’t do it at all.” He’s right, of course, but “Don’t do it at all” was not an option. That left “Do it wrong.” Sometimes in life stupid moves are the only moves you have left.

I started shunting junk towards the middle of the shed and pouring small sections whenever I felt in the mood. The solar power junction area was the first section I completed which allowed me to finish the off grid power system and shut that damn generator off.

The shed needed a foundation so I poured 16-inch J-bolts every 4 feet or so and once they were set I could excavate under the edge and pour a section of footer. I may not have needed the support from the J-bolts but the Eagle was flimsy and if the thing sagged or buckled even a little it would be a bear to fix.  I erred in favor of not buckling the shed.

Progress was slow because there was so much stuff stored in the shed I could barely make room for a pour. When she wasn’t working CT and I would go through the hundreds of plastic tubs and each time we got rid of a few. Pieces of furniture neither of us liked were donated to the thrift store. Slowly I made headway and had enough room to build a loft where a couple hundred tubs of really good junk could be moved. The floor space kept increasing and I kept pouring.

The job was not a continuous thing. I might work on it one week and leave it for a month, or 4 months. Mice were a blessing and a curse. Once they chewed up an item or tub full of clothing it was an easy decision to take it to the dump. The dust was incredible; each breeze sent a cloud of fine sand whirling around the interior of the building.

I’ve been sporadically working on the shed floor for 3 years. It was overwhelming at times but as I got closer to the finish line I kicked it into high gear: This last month I could smell the barn if you don’t mind that sort of lame wordplay. It’s funny, I have no common recollection of the work I did. I mean, if I think about it I can remember pouring each slab but I feel no personal connection, the slab is just a slab, like it has always been there or I hired a guy to do the job. It’s enough for me that the floor is done and done wrong. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

    • Number of individual slabs poured: 35
    • Average number of 60# bags per pour: 42
    • Thickness of floor: 4-inches
    • Thickness of footing: 8-inches
    • Thickness of sheer wall footing 10-inches
    • Number of 60# bags of concrete used: 1500
    • Total weight of concrete: 90,000 pounds
    • Amount of concrete in square yards: 22.5
    • Number of loads mixed @ 120# each: 750
    • Number of 16-inch J-bolt piers: 45
    • Estimated man-days to pour slabs: 80
    • Cost of concrete: $4410
    • Number of feet of ½” rebar: 250
    • Number of feet of 3/8” rebar: 1600

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Product Review: MY Construction Supply Rebar Caps

We never used re-bar caps back when I was doing construction. I don’t think they had been invented yet. It was a different time: You had to be tough, man and I was. If you tripped and fell onto an exposed re-bar the thing would go clean through you and out the other side. The jobsites I worked on were grisly with dead men impaled on rusting steel. I’ll never forget that smell. In the hot Florida sun the bodies bloated fast, seemingly still alive as they twitched and waved a stiff, blackened hand each time a bubble of gas escaped.

Guys getting skewered on re-bar was so prevalent we didn’t bother to pull them off until it was time to pour the concrete. Why bother, another man will just come along and land on the thing.

I never fell onto a rebar myself. I’ve come close but managed to avoid spearing the bar, because I didn’t run up a bunch of debt going to college or paying exorbitant hospital bills for puncture remedies. Back then people took responsibility for their actions, not like now. Those guys stuck on the rebar? Maybe they should have eaten less fast food or bought a cheaper car. Today you see rebar covers all over construction jobs. It’s all part of the dumbing down of America.

Back to the rebar covers, I’m reinforcing the ground surrounding The Carriage House and there are a bunch of re-bars sticking up from the retaining wall. I’m not so worried about falling onto them (because I made wise life choices) but the damn things are sharp. The bars will eventually be bent down into the formwork and covered with concrete, until then I’m getting cut to ribbons. A good-sized gash to the elbow was the final straw.

At first I was going to use empty beer cans to cap the bars. That visual might be too much for my wife to handle and anyway I’d have to drink like 75 beers to get the job done. I’ve been trying to lose weight by drinking gin and tonics as a calorie saving measure. Processing that many beers through my gastrointestinal system was a non-starter. I found the MY caps online for 50 cents apiece.

The caps fit rebar from 3/8” to ¾”, inside the cap are 4 vanes that conform to the different sizes. It’s a good set up. The bright orange color alerts you to the bar so there’s less tripping and zero cutting on my jobsite.

They’ve been out in the sun for a few weeks and the color hasn’t faded yet. Kind of funny that the packaging says “Does not protect against impalement.” Which is the main reason you buy the damn things. I suspect some cell-phone owning construction worker fell 13 floors onto the MY cap and managed to sue the company.

Go ahead and call me a nanny-state mason. I deserve it. I guess you could say I’m getting soft in my old age. Seeing all those orange caps sitting atop the rebar makes me sad. I miss the old ways. I miss personal responsibility. And, funnily enough, I miss that smell.

Product Review: Marshalltown Grooving Trowel

We human beings spend a large percentage of our life-energy altering the Earth to better suit our desires. Take me, for instance. I’m constantly trying to rise up from Tinfiny’s mud-bound arroyo and beat Mother Nature into submission. New Mexico is no country for old men and I know I will lose in the end. We all lose in the end, our best efforts forgotten by the incurious, but that’s no reason to give up.

One of my favorite ways of taming nature is to pave it over with a layer of concrete. If it worked for Chernobyl’s smoldering, radioactive core it can work for Tinfiny Ranch. My latest attempt to delay the inevitable is the side patio. The ground on the north side of Tinfiny’s Carriage House was washing into the arroyo from heavy monsoon rains and, like the calcified bones of a long-dead Tyrannosaurus, the Carriage House’s foundation was laid bare. This is not good.

About 10-feet from the foundation I dug a footer and laid some blocks to serve as a seawall. I’ve been slowly filling it in with dirt, reburying the exposed foundation and compacting the fill in 8-inch lifts. It’s all going about as well as can be expected.

As I bring the north side up to grade I’m pouring a sloped, concrete patio to stop erosion and re-direct rain water away from the Carriage House’s foundation towards the arroyo. I love concrete as much as the next guy but even I know that great slabs of it are not the prettiest things to behold so I’m finishing the slab in smaller sections with each section grooved to resemble the cut blocks used in The Great Wall of China.

For grooving I’m using a Marshalltown trowel that I ordered online. The thing was not impressive right out of the box. It’s a flimsy looking tool that is not quite wide enough and it tends to create a border to your groove. You’ll need to practice a light hand for best results.

I thought the single direction canoe end would be a hassle, what with having to change the tool’s orientation with each stroke, but I was wrong. Grooving is much less labor intensive than edging so the back-and-forth motion used with an edger tool is replaced by a single stroke with the groover. One pass with this tool and the groove looks pretty well done. You’ll need to hit it a couple more times as the mud goes off but it’s easy as pie.

My initial reaction proved wrong: once you get the hang of it this thing really makes a nice groove. I’m free-handing the cuts just because I’m lazy and I don’t want all the lines perfectly square. The non-canoe end lets you get right up against the form. Except for making it a couple inches longer and a bit wider I am happy with how it performs. It has started to rust already but all my concrete finishing tools rust. I should probably oil them after use.

I’m so happy with the Marshalltown trowel I think I’ll keep on going around the side of The Carriage House and on into the back yard using the same method of construction. After all, you can’t let Mother Nature wash your house into the arroyo without putting up a fight.