Backyard build. DECK/CONCRETE/POOL

mr2s2000elise said:

Antihero said:

SVreX said:

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

I’ve been doing this for over 40 years, and I don’t disagree with AntiHero. 

But I do admire your ambition, and will support you as best I can. 

Thats why I suggested something small. You are gonna find this is really hard. 

Carry on- ask for help when you need it. (Although I’m not gonna come there and hump concrete for you! LOL!!)

I've been doing this 23 years professionally and longer just helping my dad with his business.

 

Pool decks are the thing that seasoned good concrete finishers sweat over. These are marriage killer sorts of jobs if you do them yourself.

 

And I'm not saying that as hypothetical, I've literally seen it happen more than a handful of times.

well marriage killer = ferrari for me. HAH jk. I appreiate the input. 

 

I wll update on Sunday -- hopefully i get through most of demo by then.

Doing this yourself could end up in roughly double your bids, so you could also probably get a Ferrari for that lol

SVreX said:

Suggestion on the concrete surface...

Antihero is right. You’re gonna have more cracks. 

Consider a textured outdoor tile. It’s much easier to handle a little bit at a time as a DIYer, and crack membrane underneath can do wonders. You can mix up some thinset, lay a small area, and come back to it three days later and do more. Cost of the materials will be close to similar. And the look can be stunning. 

Concrete MUST be done all at once, and if it comes out E36 M3ty, it comes out E36 M3ty.

Actually in this case, if he's doing 2200 sqft of stamped it would probably have to be done in a few goes, or with a huge crew. Some say that depending on the stamp 1 finisher can do 250sqft himself

Antihero said:

mr2s2000elise said:

Antihero said:

Absolutely positively do not do concrete if it's new to you. I do it for a living, there's a reason why a good finisher is usually paid a mint over everyone else in concrete.

 

Pool decks are among the hardest things to do because if you screw up the finish you have Bunches of problems, including drainage and if the finish isn't done perfectly....you either slip and fall to your death if it's too smooth or you can't walk across it without pain because it's too rough.

 

Overlayment is almost always garbage, it doesn't save money in the long run, it's at best a bandaid. Stamping and overlayment makes everything worse.

 

Stamping itself has to be done at exactly the right time, with a chalk or liquid release or it'll end up looking like garbage. Even seasoned pros that have done a lot of it only do a few yards at a time because concrete is a ticking time bomb. Your window could be an hour....it could be 5 minutes.

 

Seriously....concrete is a pay-the-man situation. Concrete, the material alone, is expensive and if you do it wrong.....it's crap. It weighs 2 tons a cubic yard and you will need a lot of tools to pull off what you want to do.....it's not $50 worth.

 

You are trying to pull off brain surgery on your 2nd day of med school level here

I appreciate this kind of input. I am not wanting to do brain surgery. My goal is to do the demo first. See where I am. Tackle the things I can. THEN get a professonional to help me. Listening to your advice, concrete is then a pay the man job! I know my limitations, and I posted this thread, because your opinions on this forum is as good as goldtoto

Even the demo is gonna be rough, 2200 sqft of concrete is roughly 55 tons. Figure 2 ton for each 8' by 10' section.

 

I'm not trying to totally kill your hopes and dreams or anything, it's just a lot harder than it looks lol

I do think you are right. It's just I want to try a bit before giving in :) 

deck demo was the easy part. Pool coping cutting I imagine will be very hard

This is the small side yard area I want to put some concrete in:

Sidewalk?  That is a reasonable first project for a DIYer

SVreX said:

Sidewalk?  That is a reasonable first project for a DIYer

That is my "test bed," to learn concrete 

is it's the side entrance to back yard 

I plan to mess around here to see how bad I am at this job 

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

That is much more reasonable like svxrex says.

How big is it? In my constant raining on your parade.....from the pics it looks like concrete truck access might be a problem, which means wheelbarrows or a line pump. One is very hard, the other is a couple hundred bucks

In reply to Antihero :

Area is 15 feet in lenght on side where I need concrete. 
 

Additonally: need to pour 400 sq feet in patio 3 inches high before sunroom. Not to mention need concrete in the deck I just did demo 
 

concrete truck + pump is needed. No real access up here 

wheelbarrow is nightmare. 2 years ago when I did front yard and backyard planters, took me 3 months to haul 9,000 lb of rock/stones by myself. Wheel barrow only did so much of the work due to dumb deck stairs. Back breaking work 

deck is now gone as are the stairs . Plan is to build new concrete proper stairs here on side yard . As we shall call it my "practice area"

Pool coping 

Debris 

Concrete is heavier than rocks. Keep that in mind. 

SVreX said:

Concrete is heavier than rocks. Keep that in mind. 

Yeah. Thus wheelbarrow won't work. 
 

my plan is whatever pool coping material I can take off, I put it in my old deck, to use as filler 

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

You mean YOU won’t work!  The wheelbarrow will work fine!  Haha!

Regarding the rubble from your pool coping... rubble doesn’t make good fill. It doesn’t compact, and leaves voids. If the sharp corners are exposed when the concrete is poured, they will encourage cracks to develop in the concrete. 

You can use rubble, but only for deeper fill areas that will be completely covered with fill sand/clay and properly compacted before pouring concrete.  That’s probably about 8” of dirt on top of the rubble.  This is almost always a job for heavy equipment.  If you are doing it by hand, you may just want fill sand/clay, not concrete rubble. 

In reply to SVreX :

Haha you are right . Wheel barrow will work. I just don't want to work the wheel barrow 

sand clay it is. Yup will be done by hand by me 

I'm subscribed. I like to do things I haven't done before. I do have to agree with the others about the concrete work. I worked on a crew when I was young. Its hard back breaking work best left to pros. 

part of the reason I like the idea of trying to tackle jobs yourself is that you can research, ask for help, and do things the right way. 

Often times contractors, especially bad ones, don't like taking criticisms. "Hey, are you going to use such and such a technique" "nah, I've been doing this for years and we never do that." 

I've noticed it can be a bit strange asking a contractor during the bidding process what his steps for work are. I feel like I'm put at ease when a contractor is more amendable to the idea of me helping him with various parts of the process. "Hey can I do demo" or "Can I help while you do this part." Most contractors HATE this, but if you can find one who will deal with you "helping" and deal with your questions about the process, you've found a good one. 

In reply to pheller :

I have no problem cooperating with customers, answering questions, and enabling them to complete portions of the project themselves. 

They ARE NOT working on my jobsite during our regular working hours. I absolutely can’t take that liability. 

When I find a customer who understands that, I’ve found a good one. 

...I also can’t compete with YouTube videos. There is a difference between asking questions, and challenging my experience based on some BS somebody saw on some idiot’s YouTube channel. 

That’s a good way to get me to raise my price.

mr2s2000elise said:

In reply to Antihero :

Area is 15 feet in lenght on side where I need concrete. 
 

Additonally: need to pour 400 sq feet in patio 3 inches high before sunroom. Not to mention need concrete in the deck I just did demo 
 

concrete truck + pump is needed. No real access up here 

 

wheelbarrow is nightmare. 2 years ago when I did front yard and backyard planters, took me 3 months to haul 9,000 lb of rock/stones by myself. Wheel barrow only did so much of the work due to dumb deck stairs. Back breaking work 

 

deck is now gone as are the stairs . Plan is to build new concrete proper stairs here on side yard . As we shall call it my "practice area"

Poured stairs are tricky too( I know I sound like a broken record here but hear me out) because they have to be strong enough to hold many tons of concrete, yet they have to be weak enough to strip while the concrete is still wet. You strip the steps while they are wet to finish them. You really have to read the concrete to know when exactly to strip the forms off, too early and it slumps down and you have a Pile Monument. Too late and you can't finish it. You can also "sack" them, by using mortar and moose milk( real term but it's basically a binder/adhesive) if you don't want to strip and face them while wet, but your forms have to be dead on without any imperfections because you can't hide much. There is also some color factor since sackcrete and mortar is always a different color than concrete from a plant.

I'd probably recommend you do only the sidewalk even though it's not cost effective. It's a bit over half a yard so you'll get a short yard premium but it's in easily managed bites. 2 slabs away from each other, especially if it's just you and no experience, isn't ideal. I would wheelbarrow a half yard because it's "only" 2000 pounds instead of using a pump to save costs but ymmv

SVreX said:

...I also can’t compete with YouTube videos. There is a difference between asking questions, and challenging my experience based on some BS somebody saw on some idiot’s YouTube channel. 

That’s a good way to get me to raise my price.

What if that guy on YouTube has more experience than you? Or their speciality is in something you don't know as much about?

That's quickly becoming a problem in the trades - arrogant contractors who claim they know more than everyone else, charging stupid high prices, and not standing behind their work. The average layman has right to be skeptical. 

Paul, I'm not doubting your experience, knowledge or quality. People pay you to make sure that other people do a good job. I'm doubting the current state of the trades. All the good contractors are busying working on long-term, high paying projects, and residential customers are forced to deal with not so good contractors. 

Case in point: I know indirectly of a very wealthy client who hired a HVAC company to install a new gas HVAC system in her very expensive remodelled home. She wanted the best, and hired a company that served other very rich homeowners in the area. This is a woman who doesn't cheap out. Anyway, the system was installed, and somehow the intake was messed up, it was burning dirty, and pumping carbon monoixed into the house. Alarms go off, fire company comes, says Co2 measurements are off the charts, and they are lucky to be alive. 

Anyway, she contacts the company and says "hey we paid you $80k (my guess, it might have been more than that) for this system and it nearly killed us. Rip it all out and start over." They fought it, saying it wasn't a big deal and would be easy to fix. She retorts "rip it all out, or I will put your entire company into bankruptcy." - This lady has the resources to do that. 

She didn't want them to fix a mistake that almost killed her, she wanted to teach them a lesson. Not every small-time homeowners can do that with their contractors. 

It just goes to show that sometimes spending all the money and getting the best contractors still doesn't result in the best quality work, and even really good contractors have a hard time admitting to mistakes. 

In reply to pheller :

The problem is, it isn't criticism.....you/they don't know what you are talking about.

You can do all the research you want, it could be the right kind of research, or the wrong type of research. Think about this: how many mechanic videos are on YouTube that are totally wrong? It's a lot more than it should be, and if that was the research you did.....it was wrong.

The other problem is, we do things the way we do not because it makes sense on the step we are doing right now, it's the step 25 steps down that I'm preparing for. Do something that seems easier now can screw up something big later.

I don't mind offers for help but I usually tell people that more than likely, it's adding cost rather than subtracting it. Helping the contractor can seem good but 99 percent of people that do that assume they are walking on the job as the foreman in charge when in fact you probably know nothing. Otherwise you wouldn't hire me and give me thousands of dollars. This means that you are the grunt, and the grunt works hard. If you aren't prepared for this level of physical work......it ends badly.

Concrete is tough, like.....send-people-home-crying tough, like I've worked with great athletes that can't do it because it's weirdly specific physically. On big slabs I've seen people pass out while working. If it's going off, I'm not taking a break at all. I've ran power trowels and hand finished for 12 hours straight without any breaks at all, not even water, before. I've laid down 130 yards of concrete with a screed board and one raker. No Bunyan tube(roller screed), no fancy tools just 3 guys, a rake and a 2x4. That's 260 tons of material.

So while you may think you are criticising and helping for the best, it almost always comes off the same way watching old Top Gear and seeing Jeremy Clarkston say...."how hard could it be?" . It's hard and thinking it isn't is because you don't grasp what's involved.

I'm not being an shiny happy person or mean, these are facts

I'm glad you're giving advice freely. There are many contractors who would simply say "hire a professional" and nothing more. 

In reply to pheller :

Commercial work does not mean better by any means. I've done both and just like residential......there is some seriously bad E36 M3 out there.

I'm not sure svrex will agree here but.....a lot of commercial work is all about cost and speed. If you aren't great at your job, you make mistakes. Fixing mistakes costs time and money, and a lot will do as little fixing as possible. The fastest way to do something is once and done right

Residential work I believe has a little more accountability because it's smaller companies but there are aszhats in both walks there.

In reply to pheller :

I’m trying to find the value in your example. 

So a reputable company made a mistake, and a bitchy woman with ridiculous resources threatens them and forces them to do punitive work (that is entirely unnecessary), and SHE’S the hero??

The only thing she is proving is what a azzhat she can be, and forcing the company to charge more to all their other decent paying customers. 

That’s not what heros look like. 

In reply to pheller :

This is a great community, I broke down in the middle of nowhere and had offers of help from complete strangers willing to drive hours out of their way on my Rampage trip.

I give back to this cool community anyway I can

In reply to SVreX :

I don't disagree with this statement