Yes we got our concrete pour on Friday!!! Big thanks to Al Riozzi (AJR Masonry) and his crew who did a great job! This was a big big day for us and has taken about three months to prepare for and we got it done just before winter sets in. It’s been quite the slog and so pleased this is behind us now. As a reminder this is how the ground floor looked in April.
Final thickness of the concrete was about 4 & 1/2 – 5″ which is a decent thickness and we also added rebar mesh supports to lift the rebar and radiant tubing to the top third of the slab, this will make the radiant heating system more efficient and responsive. We also managed to drop this new floor by about 5″ giving us a little more headroom.
This is the crew, I didn’t catch all their names but pictured (in no order) is Al, Anthony and Pat, and I have to credit Pat with the “Adirondack wheel barrow chair”, it looks really, really comfortable and it’s portable!
The last few shots were just before the pour and shows how we used small supports (known as chairs in the trade) to lift up the rebar mesh and Pex tubing. Concrete guys don’t really like these but Dave from the building department wanted them and I think that was a good call.
For some reason the video camera shut down before they had finished with the power trowel. I think they did three passes, using two different sized machines.
Post pour, if the pictures look a little steamy that’s because it was steamy. Temperature was about 70°F and steam was coming off the concrete. Al did say to expect this as it’s an exothermic reaction. We also have a few heaters to make sure the temperature doesn’t drop too low – tonight it’s dropping to almost 0°C, brrrrr.
For some reason they didn’t add concrete all the way to the edges, probably something we should have discussed beforehand. Anyway we filled in these areas this weekend and are misting the concrete to improve the cure. There are some areas where you can see some deviations in height but overall it appears pretty flat and we’re happy with the results.
In about a month, when the concrete is fully cured, we will apply a coat of epoxy, probably colored, to add some protection and to smooth out any imperfections, but this is only if we can warm up the area to about 50° which is doubtful. Maybe we can install the rest of the radiant heating system, that would be cosy 🙂
Here’s more on the history of concrete, for all you nerds.
