New garage time!

[fatjay]

Twisted all the wire by hand to tie the rebar. Not done yet but I got some wire mesh on. It supports my weight walking on the wire mesh if i don't step directly on the chairs. I'm tying the mesh to the rebar as well so that doesn't move. Once that's in I'll lay the pex.

 

[dragoneggs]

Sorry, my attention span isn't good. What is the mesh for?

 

[fatjay]

Sorry, my attention span isn't good. What is the mesh for?

More strength and the pex clips spacing. It’s a 6x6 mesh, pex every 12”, so it’ll be easy to get exactly12” spacing. Which if I need to drill the floor will make it easier to avoid hitting the pex.

 

[Alan W.]

Prepping for a garage slab myself. Like your chairs. Concrete plant said they were out and couldn’t get any. I used the ones from Lowes, think they were 40 something cents apiece. Glad to see your gonna pour the slab yourself. Ive poured a lot but health problems prevent it now. Good luck.

 

[fatjay]

Prepping for a garage slab myself. Like your chairs. Concrete plant said they were out and couldn’t get any. I used the ones from Lowes, think they were 40 something cents apiece. Glad to see your gonna pour the slab yourself. Ive poured a lot but health problems prevent it now. Good luck.

I got the chairs from home depot for $250, but returned them. I like the 3" schedule 40 pvc chairs. Granted it was a couple hours work with the right tools, and made a huge mess.

 

[fatjay]

It's not much but it adds up. Cutting expenses left and right, doing a lot of the work myself, has allowed me to beef everything up. 4" walls became 8" walls, 4" slab became 6" slab, 3x3' rebar grid became 2x2' rebar grid plus wire. A $70k building is becoming a 30k building. Raw materials are cheap, finished materials are expensive, labor is expensive. So I'm trying to make what I can and do the work that I can myself.

 

[Alan W.]

It's not much but it adds up. Cutting expenses left and right, doing a lot of the work myself, has allowed me to beef everything up. 4" walls became 8" walls, 4" slab became 6" slab, 3x3' rebar grid became 2x2' rebar grid plus wire. A $70k building is becoming a 30k building. Raw materials are cheap, finished materials are expensive, labor is expensive. So I'm trying to make what I can and do the work that I can myself.

Completely understand the philosophy. And with the way prices are these days more people will come to appreciate it also.

 

[KWentling]

Just read about the last 15 pages of this. Pretty impressed. Different that what is done on this part of the country. I was hoping by the time I got to this point in the thread that the pex
plan would have changed. I built my shop 20 years ago. My pex was tied to welded wire hog panels (much like your "mesh" which isn't what I was expecting to see) and then the #3 rebar over the top of that. All this was set on chunks of broken 1 1/2" thick paver block. This was on a 6" thick slab keeping the pex in the bottom half of the slab. Even at that, the pex was snagged at least once with the concrete rake and remember the pex tends to want to float. If doing that today I would absolutely staple that pex to the foam. I see all kinds of red flags with your plan.
Best of luck.

 

[fatjay]

Run into a snag. Water got in the vapor barrier and floated the insulation and rebar. When researching hte issue, i found that the vapor barrier is supposed to go on top of the insulation. So now i'm taking all the rebar and insulation up, then taking the vapor barrier off and putting insulation down, then putting the vapor barrier back down and chairs/rebar on top of that.

Short video of the draining: https://i.imgur.com/PEFxCm5.mp4

 

[ovrszd]

Just helped a friend lay insulation, pex and steel for his house pad. Concrete guy was adamant that we had to do it the day before the scheduled pour and not any sooner. Reason is well displayed here. Bummer.....

We don't use vapor barrier here. If using it, there's no reason that it can't be under the insulation. But in your case you now have a pond.