Concrete porch for your home

Almost every house needs a porch. In addition to the practical side of the issue, without it, any structure will have an unfinished look. If building a house is troublesome, requiring high professionalism, then a concrete porch for a house with its own hands can, if desired, be built by any owner who has a general understanding of construction.

General requirements

Despite the fact that the instructions for the construction of a large complexity is no different, take the construction better seriously.

Almost all stages of construction are physically difficult, so it will have to sweat.

• Experts advise to start with a general design sketch. It is very important that the reinforced concrete porch blends seamlessly into the architecture of the building. Otherwise, you risk spoiling the front of the house.
• Concrete was chosen here by no means by chance, the fact is that if all the norms, rules and requirements for construction are observed, this construction will serve your grandchildren and great-grandchildren faithfully. And an important factor is that the concrete is used as a base and can be lined or re-painted at any time, with any facing material.
• This material is equally well suited for any building, so a concrete porch to a wooden house can be easily sheathed with wood or wood siding, thanks to which it will look like part of a wooden structure.

Technical requirements

Naturally, any construction begins with proper planning, first of all, you need to draw as much as possible a detailed drawing, or at least a sketch.

The construction of a concrete porch is not difficult in principle, but it is important to take into account many different nuances when building.

• The number of steps depends on the height of the structure.. According to GOST standards for comfortable movement, the height of each step of the risers, when casting, should be in the range of 120 - 180 mm. The width of the concrete step "step" ranges from 250 to 300 mm.
• The number of steps must be not evenThe fact is that it is convenient for a person to overcome a flight of stairs, starting and ending with movement with one foot. The angle of the march also has a certain value, here, besides the convenience of movement, it is still important that precipitation does not linger on the structure, it is 26 - 45 ?.
• The depth of the area in front of the door must be at least 1 mIdeally, for comfortable operation, 2 sizes of an open entrance door are taken. The minimum width should exceed the dimensions of the door loot by 150 mm. The area in front of the door is made somewhat lower than the cut of the door, approximately 50 mm.
• The minimum width of the staircase for the normal movement of 1 person should be about 800 mm, for two not less than 1 m. If more than 3 steps are planned in the flight of stairs, then it is desirable to equip the structure with handrails.

Stages of construction

When the drawing is ready and all the calculations are done, you can proceed to construction. It has several conditional stages, laying the foundation, installation of formwork, reinforcement, preparation and pouring of the solution, lining.

Laying the foundation

There are several options here.

Most reliably, of course, pour the total monolithic reinforced slab on the entire square of the structure, but the price of this option will be quite substantial.

• Most often, a strip foundation is poured around the perimeter, and the internal space is filled with sand or gravel. The depth of the foundation should be at the level of the basement depth of the house or 150 mm below the soil freezing point.
• Ideally, a reinforced concrete porch is better to plan before pouring the foundation of the house so that they form a single whole, then no frosty heaving of the porch is scary.
• In places with a high level of soil freezing, you can mount a tape-column foundation. In this case, the slab or tape is laid at a depth of 40 cm, plus supporting concrete pillars are made at the nodal points below the soil freezing by 30 cm.

Important: if you attach the porch to the finished structure, then it is highly undesirable to lean the staircase on the foundation of the house. In winter, due to soil movement, the structures can mutually collapse. In this case, both monoliths are desirable to do independently of each other.

• As mentioned earlier, the average depth of the foundation of about 30 - 40 cm. The bottom is well compacted and covered with roofing material or geotextile. Next comes 10 cm of sand and 5 cm of rubble, all of which are packed tightly.

Installation of formwork

• Traditionally, formwork can be made of sheet iron or thick plywood, USB plates and wooden boards. The price of iron formwork "bites", plus it is heavy. Therefore, most often it is made of wood materials.
• The size of the side sheets is selected taking into account the immersion in the ground to the blind area. They are reinforced with stiffeners and struts. From the inside, after mounting the fittings, the strips bounding the risers are installed and fixed between themselves and to the side sheets.
• As for the reinforcement cage, its scheme should also be drawn in advance in the sketch. The whole structure is reinforced with at least 2 layers of reinforcement with a pitch of 100 - 200 mm. The optimal cross-section of the rod here is 12 mm. The construction can be welded, but it is often faster to tie it up with a binding wire.
• The installation of formwork should be taken seriously, because if you fill the curve structure with you, to correct defects you will need to cut the concrete with diamond circles, and this is expensive and time-consuming.

Important: when side joining the stairs to the foundation and the wall of the house, experts advise to fix the edges of the reinforcement in the pre-drilled holes. Here for the arrangement diamond drilling of holes in concrete is used.

Pouring solution

Reinforced concrete porch does not apply to objects with increased load, therefore, M200 concrete is enough for it. If you plan to veneering porcelain or other durable material, then you can do with the brand M100.

But it should be remembered that the lower the grade of the solution, the longer it will freeze.

The ratio of the components shown in the table below.

• As a rule, concrete is prepared directly at the site, it is better to use a concrete mixer, and it is difficult to mix it with hand by hand. To compact the concrete, it is convenient to use a submersible electric vibrator, which can be rented or tapped with rods by hand.
• To increase the plasticity of concrete in the people it is advised to add slaked lime and soap solution or detergent. But we recommend to buy a special additive for concrete, it can improve all the characteristics of the composition by an order of magnitude.
• It is recommended to remove the formwork not earlier than after 3 days, but concrete gains strength within 27 days. And during this time it should be regularly wetted.

On the video in this article you can find some more useful tips.

Conclusion

I would also like to note that before you make a concrete porch with your own hands, it will not be superfluous to decide firmly on the type of facing material, since the geometry of the structure directly depends on its thickness. Plus, any porch is desirable to equip the visor or canopy.