How I poured my Concrete Basement Floor D.I.Y.

Hey, what's up everybody? This is CLS all-in-one. For this video, I'll be showing how I poured my concrete floor for my concrete block basement. To start off with, there needs to be a good base to pour the concrete on. This base was just the natural undisturbed soil, which consists of sand and a lot of 1-inch and larger round rock, which is suitable for pouring the concrete on in my area. But you will want to check with your local building codes to know what's suitable for your area. A layer of gravel may be necessary, and drainage provisions might be needed as well. And with whatever base you are using, you want to make sure to compact it with a little bit of moisture to make sure it's nice and solid. For my basement floor, I chose to use an expansion joint where the floor meets the walls. Now, expansion joints are not necessary when pouring a basement floor, but they may decrease the chances of cracks happening in the concrete. This expansion joint material is about 3-8 of an inch thick and 4 inches tall, and just glues to the wall with ease. I also set some grade stakes in the middle of the basement floor area. The top of these stakes indicates the exact height of where the finished concrete surface should be. And once you screed the concrete even with the stakes, they can either be removed or hit down with a hammer. To set the grade height for the basement floor where it meets the wall, you can just measure from the top of the footing to the desired height you want your concrete thickness to be. Then make a mark with a chalk line. For example, if you want your concrete to be 4 inches thick, you just measure up 4 inches from the top of the footing, then make your marks. In my situation, my expansion joint happens to be 4 inches tall and is resting on top of the footing. So this makes a perfect guide for my basement floor grade. This basement does not have utilities such as water and sewer, but I did make a small sump pump well that's partially sticking out here. And this will end up with concrete surrounding the outside of it. To reinforce my basement floor, I did lay out some half inch rebar, and I tried to put this in a grid of about every 4 foot. And to elevate the rebar so it's not just sitting on the ground, I am using some rebar chairs or rebar stands. These are pretty cheap. They're about 99 cents a piece. And I'll show you how these go on. They just pop right underneath the rebar, and then rest right on top of that stand like this. And I'll be waiting to put most of these stands on until we start pouring the concrete. That way we're not stepping on these and breaking them. I'll just kind of put the stands out as we go. To pour the concrete, you could use a pump truck which can make the job a lot easier. But these can get really expensive. I did go ahead and use a pump truck when I poured the footer. But to save money, I ended up just using a regular concrete truck when we poured the basement floor. When pouring a basement floor with a concrete truck, it can be a little difficult because more than likely you will not be able to reach all areas of the basement. And a wheelbarrow will be needed. Also, when attaching the chutes on the truck, I found that if you put the last one on backwards, that will help guide the concrete into the wheelbarrow a little easier. So for the far side of the basement, I did have to start off with the wheelbarrow. And for this first load, I got it a little bit too full. This load is pretty heavy. Also, another thing you should keep in mind is to get a wheelbarrow that has two wheels on the front. That'll make it way more stable when you're pouring concrete. And this will give you less chances of spilling the concrete. So I'm going to start off with filling the edges first. And I'm going to go ahead and get about four to five wheelbarrows down before I start doing anything with the concrete. And when you're pouring the concrete with the wheelbarrow, you want to make sure not to pour it right up against the wall. You want to stay a little ways back. That way it doesn't splash up on the wall and make a mess. So I have a couple more wheelbarrow loads to drop here. And one more. Now I can go ahead and start leveling the concrete with a concrete rake. Or if you don't have that many concrete tools like myself, you could use a chute rake or even a rigid steel garden rake. And what I'm trying to do here is level the concrete to the correct grade. So I'm pushing some of the concrete to the edges and pulling the excess back. Now I'm going to grab a couple hand trowels or hand floats to level and smooth the outside edges of the concrete where it meets the wall at about 16 inches wide and try to get this as close as possible to grade. And this will seal the edges plus give a nice visual starting point for the grade. And now it's time to start dumping some more concrete with the wheelbarrow. So what I'm trying to achieve here is a four inch thick floor. And I'm trying to spread this out as evenly as possible with the wheelbarrow. That way I don't have to do as much raking. And once I get the areas full with concrete where the rebar is located, I can go ahead and get the rebar stands in place. And once I get the far side of the basement filled with concrete using the wheelbarrow, I can then move on to the closer side where the truck is located. And this is about to get a lot easier. With the last chute on backwards like this and the chute in the unlock position, you can start guiding where the concrete shoots out fairly easy. Right here, we're trying to spread the concrete out evenly at about four inches thick using the chute. And since I'm not using the wheelbarrow in this area, I can go ahead and get my rebar stands in place. And something I would like to mention is more than likely the concrete will end up splashing up on the wall when using this method. And if you don't want to have to scrape that concrete off later, it'd be a good idea to go ahead and put some plastic on the wall. So we poured as much concrete as we can in this area using this method. And now it's time to go ahead and start raking this concrete out and getting it level and at grade. And as I mentioned earlier, I do have some grade stakes that are located in the middle of this flooring area. And these will help me reference where the concrete surface grade should be. And once I get all the concrete raked and somewhat level, it's time to grab my hand trowels to level, smooth, and seal the outside edges to grade. And I'm not trying to get a perfect finish at this point. I'm just trying to make a nice and level starting point that's at grade. And once I finish smoothing out the edges, it's time to start screeding the concrete. And they do sell actual screed boards for concrete, but a 2x4 will work just fine for a job like this. So right here, we are locating where the grade stake is by screeding the concrete down until it's flush with the stake. Now we have a level graded area in the middle as well as the sides. That will give us a very good point of reference of where the remaining concrete needs to be leveled to. Now we are going to screed the concrete from this direction and start working our way back. When screeding, you are mostly just pulling the concrete back with the top of the screed board being slightly tilted. And if there is low spots, you can just add where needed with a shovel or push it in with the rake. And if there's high spots that are too hard to screed, you can just pull that concrete back with the rake. Now if you don't have some sort of long handle bowl float, you will only be able to screed a few feet at a time before you need to hand float the concrete. Because you will not be able to reach with a hand float if you get too far. In my case, I do have a float so I can go about eight feet at a time before I need to float the concrete. And once you get a big enough area screeded where the grade stakes are located, you can go ahead and tap the stakes down or remove them. Now it's time to start floating the area that has been screeded and I will be using a bowl float. And I prefer to use a float that has rounded outside edges, but this one will get the job done. So what I'm doing here is letting the float rest on the concrete. Then I push it forward with the front of the float being slightly tilted up. And after I reach as far as I can, I pull back with the back of the float now being slightly tilted up. And after you make a couple passes, the cream inside the concrete will rise to the top. And this will let you smooth, level, and fill the surface. So this is a 24 by 16 foot basement. And I'm working in eight foot sections at a time because that's what I can reach with my bowl float. And now I'm on the last eight feet. And right here we are using a hand float to float this area because the larger bowl float will not fit. At this point, we're doing the last bit of screed work. When pouring concrete in a basement, it'd be a good idea to make the last pour by an exit point, such as a basement window opening, which will be our exit point. So right here we are screeding the concrete and it's pretty close to being ready for the bowl float. There's just a couple low spots that need to be filled still. So as he's screeding here with any low spots that he finds, he's just grabbing a handful of concrete and throwing it in that area to fill those tiny voids. And at the same time as he's working his way back, he's filling in his footsteps as he goes. And I would like to mention that you should not grab the concrete with your bare hands. You should definitely wear a pair of gloves if you're going to try something like this. So there's just a few small voids or holes in this area and he's adding just a small amount of material so he can fill these voids. And now I'm just about done screeding. And I'm going to go ahead and jump out the window opening and finish the very last bit here with the hand float. As you can see here, I'm just hanging over the window opening and reaching out with the hand float to finish this area. Now if for some reason you don't have a window opening to make your exit from, you could hang a ladder over the side to make that your exit point. Now I've grabbed my bowl float to finish the last bit of floating in this area. And I'm reaching as far as I can to get this done. And for all the areas that cannot be reached with a larger bowl float from this position, I made sure to use hand floats in those areas beforehand while working my way to the back of the basement. Now it's time to let the concrete start to harden to the point where you can only press your fingers into the concrete about one quarter of an inch. At this point, you can begin finishing the concrete using steel hand trowels. But if there is any areas that are somewhat rough still, a quick pass with a hand meg float might be necessary first in these areas before using the steel trowels. To avoid leaving marks or imprints in the concrete, you can use knee pads, which will displace your body weight at the point of contact on the concrete. For this job, we're just using some homemade knee boards. So right here, we are finishing the concrete with steel trowels with a back and forth fanning motion. And with whatever direction the trowel is moving, I try to keep the edge slightly tilted up to avoid digging or marking into the surface. This step may require a lot of downward force to achieve good results and multiple passes will more than likely be necessary. The allowed work time to finish the concrete will vary depending on the outside temperature. For this job, it was 92 degrees while finishing, so our time was somewhat limited. If needed, the surface can be misted with small amounts of water to help finish the surface. But you want to be very careful because if you add too much water, it can cause cracks in the concrete. Now it's time to let the concrete cure overnight and get ready for the next step. So it's been about 14 hours and it's time to cut some joints in the concrete. For this step, I'll be using a skill saw with a masonry blade, some safety glasses, and a mask. A larger quickie saw can make this job a lot easier, but I will demonstrate that this skill saw will work just fine. For guidelines, I used a chalk line and made marks in the middle of the floor going both directions. With a skill saw, I'm trying to achieve a 3 quarters of an inch deep cut in the concrete. And depending on how hard the concrete is, this step may take a while. By cutting joints like this, it will give the floor a controlled place to crack. Without joints, the floor will more than likely crack on its own, causing possible damage or visual blemishes. So I mentioned earlier that concrete may splash up on the wall if you don't get that covered with plastic. And that's what happened with this particular wall. But it does scrape off pretty easily with just a steel trowel. Also earlier in this video, I mentioned the use of an expansion joint. With the expansion joint material that I used for this basement, it does have a layer that peels off the top of it that's 3 eighths of an inch by 3 eighths of an inch. And this creates a gap that you can apply some elastomeric sealant inside of. And here's a look at my concrete block basement after finishing the concrete floor. And here it is after finishing my basement plus the addition. And here it is while finishing the basement. At this point, I started a little bit of the framing. And here it is after finishing the basement. And I'm going to pull the carpet up on the edge here so we can see that edge where I pulled off that layer of expansion joint. And right here, you can see that elastomeric sealant. Okay, it's now time for me to go. If you like this video, if you could hit that like button and have yourself a great day, and I'll see you next time.