SLAB ON GRADE POUR w/ IN-FLOOR HEAT! 3,500 Sq. Ft.

We finally got our concrete floor for our slab on grade house poured! We battled mother nature but managed to get it poured without sacrificing quality. My friend came and helped out so that we had extra hands. This is a HUGE milestone in the build because it marks the completion of the foundation. Now....ON TO BUILDING WALLS! If you're new here Welcome! My wife and I are building this house ourselves from the ground up while having full time jobs. The house will be a 3,500 sq. ft. ranch with attached garage. We're going for passive house numbers without the extensive amount of engineering and overpriced windows that are required for that!
#concrete #foundation #construction
Instagram: @TheMIttenFarmhouse
Concrete mix design we used:
6 bag cement mixture, round stone, no air additive, slag, mid-range water reducer, full industrial fiber-mesh, poured around a 5.5 slump, used EZ Trowel Evaporation Retardant, 4 Day wet cure with vapor barrier after slab flood and periodic watering to lower temperatures.

[@LKline81]

Great work! I used to do flatwork for many years and it looks flat to me.. Especially considering it looked like you guys wet screeded it and didn't use pipes.. I laughed out loud when you were up at 3am.... There is nothing like the morning of a pour. For me it was the only days I did not need an alarm clock or a coffee to be wide awake hours before I had even planned to get up. Especially when I owned my own business doing it.. I remember one time when I was working for someone else and I showed up to a 300 yard pour and my boss and the whole crew had overslept and/or was super late.. It was just me, a new guy, a big boom pump and a line of concrete trucks... Needless to say, situations like that build character.. Just like pouring your footings yourself. Good luck on the build. I am subscribed and tuned in. Not sure why you guys don't have more views or subscribers as your videos are great. Maybe its your #Hastags??

[@RathburnRanch]

Thank you very much! Yes it’s always a rush the morning of. And that’s crazy, did you guys end up starting to dump out? I’ve had that happen in a similar situation and yes it built a lot of character. It’s good to hear from another concrete guy as most people don’t understand the difficulty and stress that comes with the line of work! I am not sure as far as views haha. We are just going to keep on grinding and hopefully someday it will pay off! Thanks for subscribing and please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see with the house build!

[@LKline81]

@@RathburnRanch Yes we started the pour without them.. The pump showed up a few minutes after me and he got it stuck trying to get into position. So I had to pull him out with a backhoe.. Which burnt up that precious pre-battle time only a concrete guy knows about.. I called the boss man a few times to see where he was and I finally got ahold of him... He said he and a few of the other guys were in route and would be there in 30-45 minutes and for me to start dumping it before it got hot... It was a roof deck with a very special mix design so it wouldn't of been able to be re-routed to another customer or turned into blocks.. So it was either dump it on the ground or on the roof.. I do not remember the amount of sq-ft but maybe 20,000? It was alot. I do remember that.. In regards to what to do for future video's? I know how to build as I did shell construction for many years, but lots of people tuning in don't.. They are here to learn something that someone else isn't teaching them., so try to teach something in each video. A trick of the trade.. That's just my two cents... And its worth two cents less than you paid me for the advice.!

[@RathburnRanch]

That sounds stressful! We are just a small crew that does primarily residential. I'd love to work on a big pour sometime and see the differences!

[@Trump2024M]

My hats off to you brother. Yall are going to have a beautiful home once your done. Btw my dog is always in the way as well.

[@adventureland693]

Nice job, love that time lapse.

[@RathburnRanch]

Thanks man!

[@BenKlassen1]

Great craftmanship! Made it look easy.

[@RathburnRanch]

Thank you!

[@KristianBojaj]

What do you think about slab vs basement? People in Michigan make it out to seem as if it’s the end of the world if you don’t have a basement.

[@RathburnRanch]

It depends on your location, budget, and lifestyle in my opinion. For us it came down to budget but there are a ton of pros to having a slab on grade. I will be doing a long form video of that decision in a few weeks! The way I see it is a basement is great if you’re looking for a small footprint, but most of the time it is just for storage, a finished bar area you never use, and a great environment for mold/issues. We have a very high water table so a basement would’ve been a real engineering nightmare to keep it dry.

[@austinrumsey8823]

Loving the build so far, are you going to be running a tankless hot water heater? We want to go tankless on our build, but I’m not sure how well it would run the house and the in floor heat all in one.

[@RathburnRanch]

Still haven’t decided on that. We plan to primarily use our wood boiler for our primary heat source for the floor, domestic will definitely be tankless. We have a Westinghouse Tankless Dual Purpose in our barn and it runs the in-floor heat and domestic hot water great, I’m not sure on how it would do with multiple bathrooms though.

[@fisherh9111]

why isn't there any steel in the slab?

[@RathburnRanch]

Didn’t think it was necessary, we compacted the base like crazy and used industrial fiber-mesh reinforcement. If it was polished concrete I would have though. Floating floors and Ditra membrane under all the tile so cracks are purely aesthetic

[@gabrielgabriel8908]

are you a construction person or this is your first house that you build? good job anyways

[@RathburnRanch]

I do flatwork concrete for a living but this is my first time doing anything other than concrete

[@jackrathburn8761]

How many yards total was the floor?? Also wondering s. f. ??

[@RathburnRanch]

43 yards total, used about 42 of it. Measures 3,480 sq.ft.

[@WichhartAcres]

Nice work man!! I just got done with all of my in floor heat tubing (17 loops) and 200 sticks of fiberglass rebar!! One question. Where did you find the stuff to pressurize your lines at? I had to get a bunch of brass fittings and cobble something together. Great video and loved the far out perspective of the pour!

[@RathburnRanch]

Awesome! Good call on the rebar! Menards sells the pressure fitting right under the radiant boilers. I believe it’s a 3/4” NPT female. So then just attach a 1/2” pex to 3/4” male NPT and some pfte tape! When are they pouring?

[@LukeSmith7777]

I saw this videos cover (thumbnail?) and thought it was a dude riding a horse….