It’s week 6 of the Spring ORC 2022. This year marks the 10th anniversary with an amazing partner in Apartment Therapy. I have come to accept that I may not be concluding this chapter of ORC by the time week 8 arrives. The plans were ambitious for 8 weeks, especially in a post-covid era where most things have returned to normal and calendars have quickly filled up. Time is a scarce once again. But we chip away.
If you came here from the ORC site, hello! I’m Sanju Patel. By day, I work behind a desk, typically crunching numbers. By night, you can find me in a garage. My wife and I purchased a home in Texas 4 years ago – a quick close without costly bells and whistles. As lifelong fans of DIY, we’ve decided to invest into our home as our family grows with an open invitation to see our process from start to finish.
The slab – ugh
Last week, we mentioned the install of our mini split unit to cool our garage, which is essential for continuing work in this space. The condenser unit will sit right outside next to the garage and occupy a 6′ x 4′ space. In my head, this plan seemed ok. After all, I’ve poured small slabs before. But this 23 cubic feet of concrete install arrived with a few headaches.
Challenge #1: moving 1280 lbs of concrete (16 bags of 80 lbs) is no joke. Thanks to a Gorilla cart, the job was slightly easier, but we had to trek from our driveway, around the house and to the backyard to access the side of the house. So ya, that took a hot minute.
Challenge #2: next, we had to dig the area 4 inches deep. The dirt was offloaded near a bedding area. Not a big deal, but I was just exhausted from moving the concrete.
Challenge #3: So I unearthed a few sprinklers lines and our fiber optic cable. The lines had to be rerouted and the cable barely came close to the edge of our planned install site. This added more time than anticipated. Thankfully, I had PVC parts on hand. Once the lines were rerouted, the concrete forms were added (repurposing yellow pine from a previous project). And as soon as the forms were added, it started to rain. Joy.
Challenge #4: The rain passed, but I totally forgot about rebar. Thanks to Home Depot, 20′ rebar was acquired (longer rebar is surprisingly cheaper). It was cut down in the parking lot with a cordless Ryobi grinder to fit inside of our car. Crushed stone was laid down and tamped – making sure the area was slightly sloped. Rebar was placed on top using plastic rebar chairs.
Challenge #5: Now came the hard part. I didn’t have an electric mixer, so the concrete had to be mixed in a wheel barrow by hand. Each bag took about 6-8 minutes to water and mix (in total 2 hours). And this is where I went wrong. Each bag was not consistently mixed. Some used less water, others had more. And you know, concrete begins to set. I worked quickly, but perhaps not quick enough. When the concrete set and the curing process started to kick in, I noticed spalling (at least what I thought was spalling). It wasn’t too bad, but some of gravel was quite apparent on top. And though it’s cosmetic, it kind of bothered me.
So off to Home Depot (again) to purchase Quikrete’s Concrete Resurfacer. It’s just a 40lb bag that also requires quick application. I thoroughly researched this, followed the mixing directions, and thankfully I was able to successfully resurface the slab. Advice: really do follow the direction to the T.
Is the mini split unit installed? Not yet. Half of the battle was pouring the concrete – and perhaps I made this job more complicated than it should have been. But I remain optimistic for the next steps which I think will fly by. I can’t wait for a cool garage. Stay tuned.
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