How To Prep A Concrete Patio- Everything You Need To Know

0:01 in this video today I'm going to show you guys how to form up a small concrete pad get it prepped ready for the pour and how to pour it and finish it um so I'm going to start just by putting these forms together it's a 12 by 8 path so I got two 12 foot boards we're gonna run one way and then I got a 10 footer and a 12 footer that we can run long ways so we're going to start with that so the first step is you're gonna screw your boards together and make sure your dimensions are right so I know these are 12s they'll be good to go and then I'll measure over eight and once that's screwed together I'll show you what to do next all right so I I put that corner together I'm going to run that board long we got this one we're also running this board long so we will have our 12x8 but right now I want to show you guys a little trick I like to do sometimes if your boards are crooked so you know you

0:49 can even buy them straight from the lumber yard and then they'll be Twisted by the time you get home so this is a pretty common thing so I screwed a stake in here I'll start my screw and you can just pull the stake real easy boom now you're bored straight up and down so it's a little tip hopefully that helps you out so once that corner is done we got both those Corners I measured over eight foot on each of these boards and what I like to do is put your exact line see that the exact line right here and then an X just so you know that's where your board is going to go so we'll screw those together we got our box now the next step is we are going to

1:36 we want to square it up off of that building over there in the house so we want everything to be kind of like square with each other so we got some pins on the other side we're going to go start with that corner and uh that side and we're gonna put some pins in there I put two pins off of this corner this is what you have to go off of for everything now so that is my point there I'm trying to line up that building over here right so I know I can put that stake in there so I'm gonna do this corner too but I'm not going to screw it in yet we're making the level we're hitting our Heights so we'll match that height to this height so I'm gonna put one more stake in and I'll show you how I get the height and a way that you can get your Heights I use

2:22 a laser level and a beeper um so that's how I get my height um another thing you can do is just use a four foot level I don't do that because I want to be as accurate as possible if you're just doing a small slab something like that you can just use a level and make sure you're level or pitching whatever you need to do for whatever you're building so I'll come over here oh real quick we got these things really cool punks punks we got some punks so I just put this in my mouth and the gnats are really bad so it's keeping them away um but anyway I'll come over here and match my height off of this one so I'll set the height here

3:09 okay so you get that and then we go over here I got these steaks in already and uh we'll screw them in once you make this the the same level over there everybody this is Dawn this is the homeowner he's helping me out here [Music] so I like to go like that so it's a little high and you can just put this stick on here we'll go like that and even just tap it down to where it needs to go lightly all right so now we got that height we got that height set now what we're going to do is make sure we're Square so uh I'll do a little bit of math quick and see what our cross Dimension is our cross mention is 14 feet 5 inches and an

3:54 eighth so we took the cross measurement this way and just as a precaution you want to do the other way too so it worked out perfectly both sides are completely square and I put a stake in there so now that is set we're gonna set the height on this so now all of the thinking is done it's Square all the corners are set it's height everything is perfect and now we have to fill in the side with uh Stakes so my rule of thumb is normally when you have a eight foot two by four or two by six in this case you put one on each end of the eight foot one in the middle so it's three Stakes per eight feet and uh on this 12 foot side we're gonna have four so I'll put two in the middle on the long sides this is how I get them straight

4:39 I use these things called Jag clamps and a string line um these are pretty interesting they're only like 30 bucks or something I used to do it with screws I'll show you how to do that on the other side if you don't want to buy these but um these are like the easiest things ever to use for any sort of string line running your form straight laying block walls literally anything you can clamp this to it's awesome so I'll make sure you can see me good good okay so I take my one clamp right here all you got to do is put it through with a hole here and wrap the slack around the little knob it's pretty cool and then make sure you're running the way you need to run so if we're

5:25 gonna run this way you put it right on the corner that way you know you're right perfectly straight and you run it down to the other side turn the string to the other side right go over your clamp string there's a little notch in there clamp it right on and all you gotta do is pull it tight wrapped around that little knob and you're good to go now we're going to put these stakes in if you see here I don't know it might be hard to see on my camera I'll get closer so we got a space right here nothing really that hard to fix you just push against it with the stick keep your foot against the bottom of your stakes and uh start counting it in

6:15 do your best to keep them straight and you can play with it a little bit as you go down to make sure you're right where it needs to be you want just about a eighth inch not even a space a sixteenth moving about there just so it matches the the clamps down there I'm having a hard time my steak got crooked I'll show you a little Quick Fix how to fix that sometimes if you can't get it perfect one way or the other you can take a little shim or Rock whatever you got ta push it against there so you see I'm a little bit on top of it be careful when you suck it in your screw so you put it in that happens

7:05 okay it's the only thing that's hard sometimes boom you get it snug still aligned you're good to go to the next one so I'm gonna do that all the way around and then I'm gonna show you uh what to do if you don't have these clamps I got these three sides all done right using my line clamps but I'm going to show you what to do if you don't have line clamps so this last side here I'm going to do the old-fashioned way we got a screw here you want to make sure that screw is perfectly on your edge of your form there you want one on this side and he went one on that side so now I'll show you how to attach the string to these things here in order to start this is your string okay

7:51 you're gonna take two fingers wrap them around here right make a loop take the string see how I'm doing that on the outside of that Loop make it make it like that you're gonna pull the loop around your fingers okay that makes like a tight knot next you're gonna put this knot on the screw you're going to push it tight two there pull it through make sure it's very close to the edge of that board right and I take the extra Slack and I just wrap it around here

8:38 okay you can just pull that down I made it like a shoelace now you can just pull this to the other side [Music] all right this time you go underneath the screw okay and you're going to hit these threads you're gonna wrap it around once you're gonna keep it on the thread so it can move see how it's on the thread there it is moving and you can pull like this right one side to the other and you just keep adjusting your hands until you get it tight enough I'm only going eight feet so that's tight enough next just wrap it around up wrap it around down sometimes I just wrapped around something else just to make sure it don't fly off then you're good enough to put your steak in so all the forms

9:25 are set right The Next Step you're going to want to do is make sure that your gravel is good so one way to do that is to run a string line like we did with those clamps across there and you measure each part of the depth every two feet and you measure the depth of how deep it is so force it four inches thick six inches thick whatever your depth is make sure you run a string across or a board whatever measure down make sure you're to the depth all I did since it's perfect eight feet was I rake the stone to the edges and then I just dragged my screed down through and made it all like basically you were pouring concrete I just made it all flat with the screed so I didn't even measure or do the string line or

10:10 not on that so this is ready for water okay I put the wire in and if you notice here every place it overlaps you overlap one square and you tie it together all you do is cut them in half and twist them over and that way when you pull them up like watch I'll pull the whole thing up boom it's one solid piece even though they're pieces so one solid piece of wire and you are completely ready to pour your concrete so the truck will be here in about an hour so one good thing about concrete is you know you get the weight around half the time so that's what we're gonna do and when it gets here I'll show you how to pour it so I'm sure this video is quite long so I'm going to end it here um I'm gonna put in the end right after this uh the

10:56 part two of this of how to place it and uh I'll show you how to actually pour it in the next video