A smooth floor for your garage seems essential and until you’ve tried to work on a stone floor or wood floor you will truly appreciate a good hard floor. Your garage’s floor will take a lot of abuse over it’s lifetime. Dropped tools, spills, heavy vehicles..you never know what we will try to throw at them.
With the prep all finished for the garage concrete floor the day came when it was time to pour. The process was going to require two separate pours to complete. The first was the interior of the garage and the shed followed by the parking apron and porch. The two pours happened on separate days.
Floor Preparation
But before the concrete could be poured the floor needed to be prepped for the radiant heat piping that will be embedded in the concrete. A border of 2 inch insulation is installed to separate the concrete from the outer areas. This insulation goes vertically too to provide more insulation.
A layer of plastic was placed over the stones and insulation to provide a vapor barrier. Finally the rebar steel grid was installed. The PEX piping loops were installed to the grid to create three separate heat loops. This allows the heat to distribute more evenly and prevents hot spots.
The First Pour
Since access to the garage by a large concrete truck isn’t really possible normally powered wheelbarrows would have been used but it’s not a great idea to run a heavy piece of equipment over the radiant floor coils. The only choice was that the concrete needed to be pumped in. As expected this added extra expense but it was unavoidable. On pour day a pumping truck came followed by the concrete truck. The concrete flowed from the big truck to the pumper and a large tube carried the concrete the rest of the way.
The concrete was distributed evenly throughout the floor while the workers smoothed the concrete. They used a gas powered concrete screed to provide an initial level to the floor. The vibrating action removes air bubbles and evens the surface.
Finishing Touches
The concrete was allowed to set for a short period of time and then the final smoothing was done with a gas powered trowel. This tool smoothes, levels and polishes the concrete for a nice finish.
It felt good to walk on the nice smooth garage concrete floor and the heat of the curing process was nice on bare feet. I had to wait several days before I put anything heavy on it. Concrete can take an average of 28 days to fully cure. This can vary due to many things like temperature and additives.
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