Pouring Concrete

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Building Simple Forms

One of the personal faults I cherish is my tendency to overbuild things. I plead guilty, but with an excuse. I've seen enough disappointing building projects to understand that when something is made just barely robust enough, it usually fails fast. Building things beefier than necessary is the best way to beat the ravages of time. This is why I like to make concrete pads thicker than absolutely necessary, using 2-by-6 lumber placed on edge as forms.

Start by laying the straightest 2-by-6s you have along the side of your pad zone, on edge, beginning in one corner and working from there. Save the crooked lumber for later, crosscutting them when you need some shorter pieces. All these 2-by-6s create the wooden walls that'll contain the concrete while it cures, yielding a pad thickness of about 5 1/2 inches. Use sharpened 18-inch-long 2-by-2 stakes, pounded into the soil using a sledge hammer, around the outside face of the forms to hold the 2-by-6s in place as you go. Position these stakes every 3 or 4 feet, using a wider 2-by-4 stake at the ends of each pair of form boards to lend wider support where neighboring boards meet. Continue laying form boards and pounding stakes until you've completed the circuit. Equalizing diagonal measurements taken corner to corner will assure you've got 90-degree corners.

Notice how I haven't mentioned anything about fastening the form boards to the stakes yet? Before using 3 1/2-inch deck screws to secure the form boards to the stakes, draw some reference lines on the inside faces of the stakes to guide up-and-down form board placement. For level pads less than 10 feet across, use a 4-foot carpenter's level to transfer reference lines from stake to stake. For bigger pads use a water level for greater accuracy. The pros use a surveying tool called a transit for leveling work like this. Rent-all stores carry them. The newest type is easy to use and features visible laser beams to transfer elevations.

Complete the form building by slicing off the ground stakes flush with the top edge of the 2-by-6 form boards using a handsaw. Leveling the concrete after the pour requires the top edge of the form boards to be uncluttered so you and a helper can drag a long piece of lumber across to level the concrete. Naturally, the stakes have to be out of the way for this to happen.

Let the Pour Begin!

If you're mixing your own concrete using the 1-2-4 cement, sand and crushed stone recipe, make sure to keep it on the dry side. Adding too much water makes concrete easier to work with, but also ultimately weaker. The ideal mix should have the stiff texture of chocolate chip cookie dough.

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Fu-Tung Cheng

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