Ok Here we are, getting ready to pour our stamped concrete slab today, what were pouring is a six sack, three eights mix Everybody has their own mix design which works for them But make sure thatyou have a good high concentration of cement so that we hold our cement water ratio up And were trying to pour between a four and a half a five inch slump to make sure that we dont have too much water and get our cement to waterratio off.
So lets go ahead and get this laid out. Okay now were ready to get startedstamping of our slab going to be using powder release. The first thing we gotta do is season our mats by season. Our mats, I mean by taking our powder release. Thatwere going to use Were going to be using a Mason brush and we come in and we dust our mats and pre-season those with out powder release. We will do that to our skins and ourmats and now were ready to go dust.
Our slab was going to use two different powder releases, one being in a nutmeg and the other being in a medium gray, giving us a two tone variation in our releases when we stamp again. We are going to use a mason brush to broadcast our release instead of broadcasting it by hand. If weare to broadcast by hand, we get what we call rollers and clumps that actually go on a slab And if they roll across the slab, they are permanent marks So that’s. Why we want to use the Mason brush. We get a more uniform broadcast on the surface.
We get a thinner broadcast. Then, we know we are actually getting an impression out of our stamp not just the release So lets go, ahead and dust this slab and get ready to start stamping. You. Always want to make sure when you order a set of tools to always have texture skins, We have them in ones and two by twos. These are for doing all your detail, workaround the perimeter of the slab, And when you order your stamps, try and get the texture of the matches to your pattern. This one today is what i have chosen
I have chosen Roman slate for one of my textures, and the other one being ElkMountain, which gives me two variations because of the stone patterns underneath Ok Now were gonna get ready to start stamping I want to make sure I actually get my first mat locked in place and settled into the concrete so now that Ican actually get all my other mats locked into it.
I always want to take and stamp, and pull the mat to me when I am stamping to make sure that my mats are pulled constantly tight to me Because, as I stamp, I am constantly pulling them, and stamping, and bringing them to me Now that weve got our first pass done across here, now what we will do is start picking their inside mats up, checking to make sure that I have textured my concrete Then well start laying them over And well start working back and forth in a zigzag pattern, all the way across his lap until were done.
While youve got opportunity, you can take these touch-up wheels and see how the squish up is here in between thebetween the stamps Where the stamps come together you can take this, while the concrete is still plastic, and roll those down And detail it out while you’re still stampin Im going around while Dave’s stampin, gettin what we can today.
but if we cant get, as long as we got texture on the concrete, were good to go we can always come back and detail tomorrow OK, now were ready to go along the wall of the house and everything. This is where our texture skin and our super flexmat are going to come in a key role. We go in first with our texture skin Give us some nicetexture alone the house.
Well back it up to our stamp Well turn it a quarter of a turn So we get a little different texture and well work our way along the wallthe house in that fashion then well come back with our super flex Remembering that this is our thinner mat and very flexible and pliable but we need to get these grout joints and detail in up here next to the house we will lay this in, bend it up in the house as far as we can go stamp it out, giving us all of our texture and our grout joints once we get that established we willpick it up and then John will have his chisel set here and he will come backand detail this using these chisels taking a smaller chisel right up to thehouse and tapping a line and finish it out its all about the detail work.
You go in this to make the realistic of the stamp job And now we are back to where we can come in with a full tool, and start with a full tool again and well finish out the detail on the corner using our skin, getting this texture all the way around and then we will take our super flex and work it all the way around this corner getting our tile detail Now this small area here is so tight to try and bend this we may damage the concrete more What Ill do is only this to John to come inand take his chisels and he will make a detail of the stamp pattern okay so we just got done stamping and wevebeen stepping in some pretty harsh conditions we got warm weather and the breeze coming across here. its dried out our top really quickly but these winds have been plaguing us all day are going to bring in a rain storm tonight so what we want to do to protect our jobis were going to have enough time between now and when it rains for the concrete to get pretty hard.
But we dont want to take any chances So what Daves gonna do is hes going broadcast release powder over the top of it Release powder is a hydrophobic material meeting that its going to repel water so were just going to broadcast a little layer over the top of this that way if it does get some rain on topits going to repeal it and its not going to damage our slab tonight Dave and I are back out here the dayafter and basically normally, Dave, concrete we want to let it set for 48 to72 hours prior to wash it off our release and stuff like that right So 48 to 72 hours weve actually waited three days wepoured this on Thursday So we waited Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and now were back out here Mondaymorning and were ready to were going to sweep off the release powder thenwere going to take our pressure washer and were going to wash off the excessrelease and were going to see what weve got lets get to work, Dave [rock music] these are tools commonly used in thedetailing of stamped concrete: a grinder with a diamond blade.
Either a tuck point blade or, in this situation a crack chasing type blade, are excellent tools for removing the squish ups that occur between stamps. The chisels – multiple sizes – are also good for getting in and doing detail work on the stamped concrete. It’s always good to have a good arsenal of these tools when you’re getting ready to do your detail work.
Okay here we are Weve got our slab all pressure washed off we went through, ground out all of our squeeze up to get some detail work on this now weve got to finish out on the slab We have a few chips along our edges that we need to repair and also we got a little surface cracking here from stamping that were going to repair One of the easiest ways to repair these little cracks within a couple days using a color hardener is take a hammer and tap them back closed The surface of the slab is plasticenough with the color hardeners that it gives the ability to close those up Next.
For the chips we want to do is we want to take onegallon paint strainer and being as we used our color hardener now we have theability to go and repair those with the exact same colors that we broadcast onthe surface we just take the one gallon paintstrainer we shake out all the fines, get us a nice container of nothing but thefines of the materials now Ill add a little water to it andgoing through all of our patchwork I went through ground out and detailedall of our joints Now some of our joints are down to the bare concrete again butwere just going to come back with one of our powder release.
We used nutmeg and medium gray Im going to use nutmeg and a foam brush and come back andrecolor those before we get ready for our sealers once Dave does a final blow off of the surface to remove all dust from the release powder he reapplied to the joints, he begins using our gem cure 1315 this cure & seal allows the slab to breathe during the curing process and will not trap excessive moisture A couple light codes will protect the surface until the slab cures at which time the concreteshould be cleaned and sealer this should be reapplied for long-term protection the sealer should be inspectedperiodically and maintained as needed based on use