How to figure concrete and finishing costs

Then a yard of concrete makes 88 sq ft of surface.

30 years ago we poured 1,000 yds of concrete for a feed lot. No rerod or wire mesh. 6 sack mix, continuous runs 16' wide, no expansion joints, no stress cuts. All poured "2 X 4" thick. Still stands today and I drive a loaded semi across it (88,000 sometimes).

Key to having a slab stand up is having a very well packed surface under it. Voids under the slab will allow breakup.

Do your prep work well before hand and you'll have a long lasting finished product.

Just like painting...prep prep prep!!!!! !

My pet pieve..... .cracked slabs.

Reason, I live on Houston Black Clay. The local State Registered (Civil) Engineer stated that "it's unsuitable for dwellings and roadways".....nar a truer statement made.

If you are doing what you say and it is not cracking up and moving away from it'self making big gaps where the cracks formed, you must have poured in on granite or something like it.

Down here (where there is no frost line)we use 1/2 inch rebar (heck with the 10 ga. mesh) on 12" centers and pre fill and pack with a sand/clay mix referred to as "select fill", use 6 bag mix at 6 inches depth..... FOR A RESIDENTAL DRIVEWAY and 1 to 2 years later pow, split, crack. errrrr rrrrr rrrrr rrrrr rr.

I hate it.

Mark

Someone else mentioned concrete will do two things, get hard, and crack. If you groove it right, at least it will crack where you want it, not where you don't.

Had a Morton building erected. So I started talking with the salesman about the slab....rememb er we're on Houston clay....he ranted on ..... .4" (really 3 1/2) with wire mesh yak yak yak.

I came home the evening before the pour and ripped up all their mesh and installed rebar. It cracked anyway but at least it went nowhere....course I didn't have a lot of rebar to put in.

Mark

There are no places where the individual slabs are "moving away" from each other. All the slabs are as tight together today as they were 30+ yrs ago when poured.

There are 2 places where there is break up, both places are around a 15' square or so where the fill settled underneath. One area was from broken water line underneath.

Over this area, 10,000+ yd of sandy clay fill was layed in by a road contractor, final screeding of gravel on 2 X 4 forms was done to give level base.

Concrete was poured in July. Now the additional 400 yds that was poured 4 yrs later in Sept isn't holding up as well as the first pour of 1000yds. The base fill underneath wasn't near the base fill on the first pour.

That is why i mentioned a good base under does as much or more for a solid slab as rebar and/or mesh.

Something weird around here (for around here) is some highway construction that's going on. They come in and remove about 3' of the Houston clay and fill with several types of soil and do the packing and watering and all and then lay asphalt as if they were going make an asphalt road but come back with 10" of concrete and some of them do and some of them don't have rebar. The ones without rebar have sections that they saw to deliberately break and at these sections they install steel pins to keep them together....very interesting.

Mark

Reason for the asphalt undereath is to provide a somewhat of a "waterproof" barrier underneath and a base that won't settle as much. Water permeation with the frost is what destroys the roads up here.

I paid $100 per yard of cement,and I bought cement.He prepared it leveling digging and filling where needed.Also power troweled it.All I had to do was cut for expansion joint layed out in ten squares.

• Try this. It should help

there are 27 cu feet in a yard of concrete... calculate your area.... width x length... for instance

if it's 12 x 36 that equals 432 sq feet.

Now to convert sq ft to cubic feet multiply the number of sq.ft by the thickness in inches...

i.e. 432 x 6 (six inches thick) = 2592

finally multiply that number (2592) times 0.0033 to get cubic yards...

i.e. 2592 x 0.0033 = 8.55 cu yards...

can't help you on the cost/install price... check with a local finisher..

the formula is...

sq. ft. x inches thick x .0033 = cubic yards

john