Cementing the deal.

Ok, I take it back... getting the cement truck in is just as hard as mixing it yourself, if not worse, or at least it it uses muscles I haven't used since the start of this project!

Anyway, after getting a price quote (gasp!) I decided only to pour part of the floor this year (cement is more expensive now because of the additives for cold weather). Basically the warm room and where the stalls are. Besides, the 8 cubic meters I did get (full truck!) near killed me.

Above is a picture of the warm room floor just before the pour. I hummed and hawed over what to do in here for a heat source (still on the fence), and decided in the end to insulate the slab and install the Ipex pipe anyway. I may not use it (I hope I do because dollar for dollar, this was the single most expensive square footage in the whole barn!) but once the cement is poured what's there is there and you can't put it in after so I went for it. Unfortunately none of the options for cementing a slab are very environmentally friendly, but I tried to at least pick Canadian made materials (cuts down on transportation fuel) and products that save more energy than it takes to produce them.

On the top of the floor (what will be under the slab, so I guess it's the bottom then... well anyway) is a thermal foil bubble sheet and the perimeter of the slab has 1 1/2 inches of EPS foam to act as a thermal break, with the gaps or cracks filled with expanding spray foam. Concrete is a huge heatsink and without the thermal break, all the heat would just bleed out. The Ipex plumbing gets zip-tied to the reinforcement wire I laid down, which in this case actually serves to hold the pipe down suspended in the slab more than it does to strengthen it.

Form up on me.


Plastic sheeting goes down before the cement is poured otherwise you have to spray water on it for hours until it cures, because the ground sucks the water out. It also helps moisture from
coming back up from the ground later after the cement cures.

Another big honkin' truck... at least it was dry this time.

Grey Gold!

After all that work we came up 1/2 a meter short of cement... in the warm roof no less! That means I'll have to break out the cement mixer tomorrow...sigh