Concreting the yard: site preparation, reinforcement,

How is the concreting of the yard done by hand? Do I need to prepare the site? What should be the bedding?

What and in what proportions to prepare concrete by yourself? We will try to answer these and some other questions.

Goals

Для начала давайте определимся с целями (читайте также статью «Reinforcement железобетонных конструкций: на что обратить внимание»).

Why do we need a concrete yard?

• Bay area in front of the house, we completely get rid of the mud in wet weather.
• It will also be possible to forget about the puddles: if the concrete site is properly planned, the water will not stagnate in front of the house.

Practical consequence: the plane of the site will be oriented not along the horizon, but with a slight bias towards it. Bias must be in the direction of the house. The instruction is connected not only with the fact that there will be puddles in the courtyard otherwise: filtering the water under the blind area will sooner or later lead to a subsidence of the foundation that was washed in by it.

• Finally, we are concreting the yard with our own hands in order to get rid of annoying weeds.

Facilities

So, how to concrete the yard?

Site preparation

Let's start with the preparation of the base.

1. Loose black soil along with the roots of the grass is removed by 5-15 centimeters. Sandy soil can not be removed and rammed: rain poured with sand has already given the maximum possible shrinkage. Dense clay also does not need to be moved.
2. Shaped bedding thickness of 10-20 centimeters. It can be filled with gravel or sand; in the first case, the price of the material will be noticeably lower.

Pay attention: on rocky and generally dense soils which absorb water poorly, you can do without bedding.

1. If the filling is still required - ram the rubble or pour sand abundantly with water. The simplest homemade tamper is obtained from a piece of a log with a short board nailed to its end. Recall: the site is not aligned with the horizon, but with a bias in the direction where rainwater runoff is desirable.
2. We enclose the site with formwork - boards, propped up with pegs hammered into the ground.
3. Cover the compacted bedding with dense polyethylene with overlapping bands and glue their connection with tape. Polyethylene will perform several functions at once:

Reinforcement

How to concrete the yard so that the concrete does not crumble in the future?

Проложив его арматурной сеткой (см.также статью «Reinforcement элементов монолитных железобетонных зданий: основы»).

For the reinforcement is usually used ready-made mesh with a cell of 10-15 centimeters and a wire thickness of 5-6 millimeters. Of course, zinc is preferable: in wet weather, the concrete will be impregnated with water to a great depth.

But to reinforce the site with scraps of pipes, a corner and other metal waste is a bad idea: the grid with a little bit of a constant cell size cannot be folded out of them; where reinforcement is laid with a large step, cracks will appear sooner or later.

The grid ideally does not fit directly onto polyethylene, but onto supports with a height of about 5 centimeters. They are easy to bend out of steel wire (of course, with sharp ends up, so as not to perforate the substrate).

Lighthouses

How to concreted yard with a constant bias in the right direction?

We will need:

1. Lighthouses. In this capacity we use ordinary slats with a section of 2x4 centimeters. Impregnation or any additional protection measures are not needed: the slats will be used once.

1. Spider - simple construction of pegs hammered into the ground and laces stretched between them, along which we will orient the lighthouses.

At first, the spider is exposed with the necessary inclination of the cords; then beacons are aligned on the cords. They are fixed with cement-sand mortar cakes. The use of quick-drying gypsum is more convenient, but there is one problem: gypsum is not resistant to high humidity and over time forms a cavity in the concrete body, the surface over which can fall under serious stress.

Solution

How to fill the yard with concrete of optimum strength?

The simplest solution is to order ready-made concrete brand M200. However, it is often more convenient, easier and cheaper to cook it on the spot. What proportions should be kept?

First, a mixture of dry components is mixed in the mixer; then water is poured into it in small portions until the desired consistency is achieved. It is not necessary to dilute the sand-cement mixture with water, and only then fill up the gravel: the stones quickly and effectively break the stuck together lumps, speeding up the preparation of concrete.

For greater mobility of concrete, liquid soap, dishwashing detergent, or laundry detergent are often added to it in an amount of about a tablespoon per bucket.

Concreting

Finally we got to the actual display of concrete.

So, how to concreted the lighthouse courtyard?

1. Concrete shovel is laid out over the reinforcement in the space between the lighthouses. The main difficulty is not to leave cavities.

Under construction conditions, the concrete is compacted with a vibrator, but this device will not be found in every private sector. We'll have to do with a splicing spade shovel: its rounded end will not damage the plastic backing.

1. Then it is laid out somewhat higher than the lighthouses and the concrete is set with rammed on the lighthouses with a rule or a sufficiently long board. The optimum thickness of the concrete pad is 8-10 centimeters.

1. In hot or rainy weather, concrete is covered with polyethylene. In the heat, the film will prevent excessively rapid evaporation of water and the appearance of cracks; in the rain - will not allow water to wash the cement from the solution. You can walk on the flooded ground on the third day; it will gain full strength in about a month.

Important point: it is better not to take wooden beacons. The resulting seams will serve to compensate for the thermal expansion of the site.

Concrete processing

How to fill the yard with concrete - we figured it out.

And what to do if you need to choose a part of concrete - under a tree, a small flowerbed, communications, or a well for water?

• Very small holes, as a rule, are drilled with a conventional perforator; However, diamond drilling of holes in concrete is more convenient because it allows you to go through the reinforcement mesh when colliding with it without changing the drill.
• For holes with a diameter of 30 to 150 millimeters, crowns are commonly used. And here diamond spraying gives a noticeable advantage - at least in that the edges of the hole remain much more even.

• Finally, cutting of reinforced concrete with diamond circles, reinforcement - with conventional abrasive ones - is used when you need to select a hole in the area from half a meter in size.

Conclusion

Надеемся, что читателю пригодятся наши рекомендации. Дополнительную информацию о том, как может выполняться бетонирование двора, можно обнаружить  в видео в этой статье (см.также статью «Фигуры из бетона: советы по изготовлению»).

Successes in construction!