Just a side note thread.... Internet is too vague so I thought I would through this out to us....
I am pouring 3500 psi concrete in my foundation supports on Thursday this week? Ambient temperature currently is 18 degrees celcius, the humidity here this time of year is 75%+, the long range forcast predicts possible scattered showers on Thursday then 18-20 and sunny for both Friday and Saturday, and the piers are 5 ft deep in the ground. ANY THOUGHTS?
Never let curing concrete dry, keep it damp for at least a week, preferrably a month.
My posts are plastic sono tubes see picture below placed to below the frost line.
(https://i1156.photobucket.com/albums/p566/ColchesterCabin/bfe54385.jpg)
Just to give some better understanding....
The plastic will keep them damp, the concrete itself will cure fine. They will be tender for a week or so, the 3500 psi is the 28 day cure compressive strength. The rest of what I'm seeing is outside of my comfort zone.
The posts in the picture are not marked cut open and are definately not ready for pouring the have to be cut open and leveld to the build line. If that is the uncomfortable part...lol the picture kind of rounds things out a bit bad angling as well.
I believe Don_P is referring to the piers themselves as not making the best, solid, unmoving, long lived foundations.
I guess if we were comparing them to a slab foundation or a pour/brick walls construction, then I would probably have to conceed the point I suppose...lol but based on use( maybe every second weekend... maybe) and cost it is a viable alternative to other choices.
I am only 33 years old and it is a place for the family to hang out and use as a base foro 4 wheeling and maybe someday hunting from. As an example my dad has a 12x12 build on those concrete blocks with a x in them for 2x something material in them. That was 20 years ago with no excavation sitting on top of the earth. His is also only made with 2x6, morale is over engineered in comparison thats for sure.
Another way I look at it is that it can always be lifeted and a foundation/slab added later. Everything for a cost...lol
That's a relief, amongst other things I thought I was looking at concrete in the tops. Lens distortion explains alot. When I walk onto a job it is subconscious, I'm scanning vertical and horizontal alignment. Within moments I'm on a good job or a bad one before it is verbal. I had tried to avoid the picture while answering a basic concrete question, but then there it was, I don't really feel comfortable with pier and beam in my mind to begin with. Do I then enable those who would like to with what little I know... well there's an ethical dilemna.
If it helps, as is so often the case it seems, there is a sort of similar thread on the inspectors forum. Part of the problem is, there is no prescriptive pier and beam section in the code for people to reference. I can see the problem from both sides.
And there is yet another side. There is a pier form that looks just like yours advertising in the glossy magazines claiming that it is "code approved". Well, there is an ESR (ICC Engineering Services Report) on them. And as for any pier the report states that they require engineering. The advertising is deceptive based on the way an average person would read it.
Foundations are a problem. I don't enjoy dumping 100 yards in a hole. Somebody sometime is then going to have to get that back out of there. That isn't green at either end. But it sure makes a fine anchor.
We know that lightweight sections can do the job but we lack guidance on how to do that properly. We know it'll work but we don't know how to do it, there's the problem. An engineer can tell us, but that costs money. If the engineer is giving the same answer time after time, its time to write a prescriptive solution. The pier form manufacturer should be helping there. Or be made aware that he should be. We recognize that things like LVL's are an engineered product and the manufacturer has engineers on staff to get those products approved and in use.
My take is, let's throw it back at them. If you bought this as a "code approved" product, just like the ad said, let's get them to show us how to do it. Give them a call. Send them your plans, full elevations. Snow load, don't neglect to tell them about the wind farm.
But at the end of the day...lol I just realized we hadn't answered the question on the dry time in the piers? If I pour on Thursday will I be ok to start framing the at lease the outside of the decking on Saturday?
Sure we did, post #3. Saturday is a real push but if you can do it without putting ANY stress on them I've done it. Honk on them, or more importantly the anchors, in any direction and you've ruined alot of work.
70% strength at 1 day, 90% at one week, 98% at 28 days and I've been told totally full at 40 years.
I was trying to discourage the word "dry" by using the proper term "cure". What cement does as it cures is grow needle like crystals that interweave with themselves and the aggregate to form a strong solid chunk of concrete. If it dries or freezes during the cure, the process stops and the concrete is far weaker.. dry is the last thing you want to do.
Now, while we're talking, are you going to have that conversation with the manufacturer? I'm pretty curious, they could see their sales explode and do the world a good turn all at the same time.
Next to using too much water when mixing concrete thinking concrete dries is probably one of the most popular misconceptions. You are not alone in referring to concrete drying.
Way way back, decades ago, a civil engineering prof I knew had a new concrete floor placed in the basement of the turn of the century house he called home. He kept it misted for the first couple of days. After it had set he plugged the sewer drain and gently flooded the floor with water. It stayed that way for a month. ;D Good old John Weibe; thick German accent. Nice guy.