Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
Speaker 1: House Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. Hey,
Speaker 1: do you know this very program is also the House
Speaker 1: Whisper podcast that you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of episodes, all searchable by topic. It is literally
Speaker 1: a home improvement reference library just for you. Today's show,
Speaker 1: this Concrete broadcast with my very special in studio guest
Speaker 1: Chris Carson, is going to belong and live for a
Speaker 1: long long time on the House Whisper podcast. So if
Speaker 1: you've missed any portion of today's show, about an hour
Speaker 1: after we go off the air of the live broadcast,
Speaker 1: it has already been converted into podcast form and it
Speaker 1: is there waiting for you. Chris is going to tell
Speaker 1: all his friends, oh, go check out the podcast I
Speaker 1: was on with the House Whisper, my friend Dean's show,
Speaker 1: and they'll all go back and they'll listen to him,
Speaker 1: and then they're going to call him and ras him
Speaker 1: do what everything that they do. And if you're thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: that's all great, what we really need is Dean and
Speaker 1: Tina standing in our house addressing that thing that we
Speaker 1: have never been able to figure out. Well, you can
Speaker 1: do that too. You can book an in home design
Speaker 1: consult with me and the tea you just go to
Speaker 1: house whisperer dot design. Okay, Chris, back into this conversation
Speaker 1: about we were talking about crack control, I want to
Speaker 1: switch over. I'm kind of we're ping pong and back
Speaker 1: and forth when it comes to when it comes to
Speaker 1: homes and an actual slab on grade house foundations. Most
Speaker 1: of our listeners are not planning on building a new
Speaker 1: house right now, but there are I would also say
Speaker 1: that most of our listeners are not aware that since
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, there are two very distinct kinds of
Speaker 1: slabs out there that their home may be sitting on.
Speaker 1: And if they're thinking about a remodel, if they're thinking
Speaker 1: about a room edition, or if they're thinking about something
Speaker 1: as simple as well, we're changing the configuration of the
Speaker 1: bathroom and I'm thinking about putting the toilet on the
Speaker 1: other side, and that's going to involve, you know, saw
Speaker 1: cutting some concrete and moving a drain. There's something very
Speaker 1: important for them to understand, and that is that the
Speaker 1: way you deal with a traditional rebar slab versus a
Speaker 1: post tension slab very very different, and it's important that
Speaker 1: we know what the difference is. So why don't you,
Speaker 1: first of all, I mean, I think everybody understands rebar,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the traditional thing. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: post tension slabs. Why are they so great?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: And also what is their vulnerability?
Speaker 3: Post tension is a way advanced reinforcing method that we
Speaker 3: have now the good the post tension and it's a
Speaker 3: cable wrapped in a heavy plastic sleeve and this cable
Speaker 3: runs through it and it is attached to each you know,
Speaker 3: each end of the form. If it's a square, it
Speaker 3: goes both ways. And after you pour, you come and
Speaker 3: hydraulically tension that cable up to a certain percent. It's
Speaker 3: fresh concrete, so you won't go to its max PSI.
Speaker 3: But what it's doing it's pulling. You know, this cable
Speaker 3: is stretching and stretching, pulling this concrete together, eliminating the
Speaker 3: possibility of separation and cracks. And then after it comes
Speaker 3: up to so many days of the PSI getting to
Speaker 3: where it needs to be, then they come in and
Speaker 3: do the last post tension tightening. And that's mostly on
Speaker 3: the newer homes I've been starting to do it on
Speaker 3: the sports courts, in the town basketball courts, tennis courts,
Speaker 3: there is a minimum of six inches thick on a
Speaker 3: post tension slab. Huge, huge gainers in the respect that
Speaker 3: you don't need all these control joints that we've been talking.
Speaker 1: About, because that that concrete has been pushed together on
Speaker 1: itself so tight hydraulically, just that it is just solid
Speaker 1: and so like on a sport or like a basketball court,
Speaker 1: you don't want to but I'm dribbling, I don't want
Speaker 1: a bunch of crack control joints under me because it's
Speaker 1: just you know, I just want it nice and smooth.
Speaker 1: But that's a big slab. To have no crack control.
Speaker 3: Joints, well, they usually put one down the middle of
Speaker 3: a tennis quarter basketball court, surety one in the middle,
Speaker 3: But there's no way you can put score marks ten
Speaker 3: foot on center.
Speaker 1: It just it just messes up the point of the
Speaker 1: thing signed the layout. Okay, So so in case you're
Speaker 1: still kind of wondering, so instead of this uh these
Speaker 1: rigid uh bits of rebar half inch diameter rebar being
Speaker 1: tied together in grids all over the house before the
Speaker 1: slab is poured, a post tension slab has these cables
Speaker 1: strung through it. Uh and uh, and those cables stretch
Speaker 1: out and and drill through the sides of the forms.
Speaker 1: They hang out with Oh sorry, I did not mean
Speaker 1: to bunch the more you know, buttons, But now I
Speaker 1: know more. Yeah, now you know more? Right andrew yep.
Speaker 1: So they hang out of the edge of the of
Speaker 1: the forms, and then we pour. And then as that
Speaker 1: concrete is setting up, then we put hydraulic equipment on
Speaker 1: the outside and grab those cables. Essentially, but think of
Speaker 1: it this way. Instead of rigid steel in your slab,
Speaker 1: we we we're gonna run guitar strings through your slab. Okay,
Speaker 1: steal guitar cable strings and uh. And after the concrete
Speaker 1: is placed, we're gonna crank those knobs and we're gonna
Speaker 1: tighten those guitar strings. We're gonna tune the guitar until
Speaker 1: they are tight.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And under tension post post poor post meaning not a
Speaker 1: post sticking up in the sky, but after the poor
Speaker 1: meaning post tension. We put tension on the concrete after
Speaker 1: the poor And so a traditional rebar slab has no
Speaker 1: tension on it. It's just the bar is in there, and
Speaker 1: it's helping to reinforce the brittleness of the concrete. But
Speaker 1: this extra pressure and tension really helps the cement hold
Speaker 1: itself together.
Speaker 3: Totally totally different than rebar. Rebar. It's a myth people
Speaker 3: think I'm going to put a bunch of rebar in
Speaker 3: this lab to keep it from cracking. Rebar does not
Speaker 3: keep concrete from cracking. It's going to crack. It's not
Speaker 3: a post tension. It's not something that's hydraulically, you know,
Speaker 3: brought up to a PSI. It's like, you know, concrete
Speaker 3: with post tension, it's like a vice. You know, you
Speaker 3: put the concrete and a vice and you tighten it.
Speaker 3: That's the way it is forever.
Speaker 1: So now post tension, it's realistic to say we're keeping
Speaker 1: the concrete from cracking exactly truly, but post tension when
Speaker 1: it comes to future work, has an achilles heel. We
Speaker 1: need to talk about that literally, an achilles heel. I
Speaker 1: think that's actually a really good metaphor for it. We're
Speaker 1: going to discuss. So go nowhere. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about this on the other side of the break. If
Speaker 1: you don't know, here's the critical thing. If you don't
Speaker 1: know whether you've got a post tens slab or not,
Speaker 1: you got to find out before anybody touches that concrete.
Speaker 1: So hang with me. Yeah, did I tease you enough?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 1: Hang tight.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: At your service. Thanks for joining us on the program.
Speaker 1: We are talking all things concrete today with my special
Speaker 1: in studio guest Chris Carson, and so we were talking
Speaker 1: about before the break to a traditional slab slab on
Speaker 1: grade for a house is done with rebar, a reinforcement
Speaker 1: bar tied with I think everybody knows what rebar looks like.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen a pore before it happens,
Speaker 1: you see it's all tied together in a grid of
Speaker 1: some sort and people wonder how close and what kind
Speaker 1: And there's no universal answer to that, all right, It
Speaker 1: really it's an engineering thing. The size of the rebar
Speaker 1: I can tell you. Typically the size of a rebar
Speaker 1: for a residential slab on great house is usually what
Speaker 1: we call number four rebar, which is a half inch rebar,
Speaker 1: and it's usually tied somewhere in the area of eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty four inches on center, you know, eighteen to
Speaker 1: twenty four inch squares, and Chris is nodding his head,
Speaker 1: so I know I'm telling you the right thing, and
Speaker 1: that's you know. And plus then there are extra bits
Speaker 1: of rebar at the bottom of the bottom of footings
Speaker 1: and the top of footings, and what we call grade beams,
Speaker 1: and there's just and pads for structural posts, and on
Speaker 1: and on it goes. The other kind of slab that
Speaker 1: has been more and more utilized started off on kind
Speaker 1: of exclusively on the high end, and then more developers
Speaker 1: started using it later on, starting in the eighties, would
Speaker 1: be a post tension slab, which before the break we
Speaker 1: were saying uses cables that are tightened after the fact.
Speaker 1: Those A post tension slab, because of the nature of
Speaker 1: its structure, doesn't need as much stuff in it. In
Speaker 1: other words, you don't find post tension slabs at eighteen
Speaker 1: inches making eighteen inches square grids with these cables. Most
Speaker 1: of the time. It's three to four foot apart from
Speaker 1: each other in general. That's but my experience. You can
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong about that, Chris, But it's
Speaker 1: about three to four feet on center. But right before
Speaker 1: the break. You know, I teased you a little bit
Speaker 1: and said, a post tension slab for all of its
Speaker 1: immense benefits. I mean we're talking essentially a crack proof
Speaker 1: slab without any control joints in it. It has an
Speaker 1: achilles heel, and the achille heel is very simply this.
Speaker 1: You can work. You can remodel and work around a
Speaker 1: post tension slab butt unlike a traditional slab, where I
Speaker 1: can just go in with a concrete saw and make
Speaker 1: cuts and cut through rebar if I need to. Because
Speaker 1: if I cut open a pad of a concrete and
Speaker 1: I've cut out a section of rebar, then I can
Speaker 1: turn around and dowl in to the side of that
Speaker 1: old cut with some epoxy, some new rebar, and remake
Speaker 1: the pad and retie it in. But if we cut
Speaker 1: a post tension cable, one of these high tension cable
Speaker 1: that's running across, it not only affects that cut right there,
Speaker 1: but it affects the structural stability of the slab along
Speaker 1: the entire length of that cable. Not only it could
Speaker 1: be a dangerous thing as well, but most importantly, ultimately,
Speaker 1: putting the danger side across, you can you can mess
Speaker 1: up an entire section of your slab.
Speaker 3: You can. I'd say the danger part that you were
Speaker 3: mentioning would be the more concerning problem if you lost
Speaker 3: a cable. You have so many cables in there. Without
Speaker 3: one cable, you're going to be okay, this slab is
Speaker 3: not going to fail. But it's a very dangerous thing
Speaker 3: to not know you have a post tension slab and
Speaker 3: to cut into it. I'm sure people have been hurt. Seriously.
Speaker 3: It explodes because of all the tension in the cable.
Speaker 3: When you cut it, it basically explodes. And you're only
Speaker 3: talking a cable that's in a six inch piece of
Speaker 3: concrete and it's not it's not something that you want
Speaker 3: to get involved with. To prevent that. We x ray
Speaker 3: slabs and lay it all out on the top of
Speaker 3: the slab before you know, you have to get in
Speaker 3: to do maybe a plumbing repair or an electrical problem,
Speaker 3: So you need to be aware. A lot of times
Speaker 3: they'll have a stamp in the girl that we'll say
Speaker 3: post tension foundation. I don't always see them there, but
Speaker 3: that's what they used to do. But there might be
Speaker 3: signs on the side of the stem walls, the sides
Speaker 3: of the walls of the foundation that show the cups
Speaker 3: and how they're mounded, unless they're stuccoed over. But it's
Speaker 3: good to know if you have post tension slab or not,
Speaker 3: and you've got a problem with your house, you need
Speaker 3: to dig into it. You better know what you.
Speaker 1: Got exactly now. Again not to say there's really there
Speaker 1: aren't any limits to what you can do with a
Speaker 1: post tension slab versus the standard slab as far as
Speaker 1: making alterations and so on. It really just comes down
Speaker 1: to this, You've got to know where the cables are
Speaker 1: and you don't cut them right. Apart from that, we
Speaker 1: can go in and do In fact, we can expose
Speaker 1: a cable, a section of cable. We can cut around
Speaker 1: it very carefully. We can expose a section of cable.
Speaker 1: We can get in there and do all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff and put it all back, and there are processes
Speaker 1: for all that. But we don't cut the cables because
Speaker 1: that can be problematic on a number of levels. So
Speaker 1: know what you've got, And if you're just sitting there,
Speaker 1: you know, not doing any work on your house, No,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go find out what you got tomorrow,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter right, and the house of the house,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna know that you've got a house that's
Speaker 1: never had any uplift and no cracks in the slab
Speaker 1: and so on. And if it's a house after built
Speaker 1: after the eighties, there's a good chance that it might
Speaker 1: be a post tension house there. But any work in
Speaker 1: which anybody is talking about doing anything with that concrete slab,
Speaker 1: you've got to know ahead of time. And it's it's
Speaker 1: only you know, you know, a few dollars I mean
Speaker 1: talking about a few hundred dollars to have a location
Speaker 1: service come out. And these guys specialize in this. The
Speaker 1: same guys that find, you know, broken water lines under
Speaker 1: your home and so on, can come out and X
Speaker 1: ray and scan your slab and literally, like Chris said,
Speaker 1: put down tape marking like here it is. You know,
Speaker 1: if the bear slab, they can paint it for you,
Speaker 1: but they can roll tape around to cross and show
Speaker 1: you right here here, you know, within an inch or two,
Speaker 1: here is where this cable is, and here's where that
Speaker 1: cable is. And then you just make sure that everybody
Speaker 1: avoids them, you know, so that so that we don't
Speaker 1: end up with something disastrous on our hands, all right, Chris,
Speaker 1: So I want to keep rolling here. I've got just
Speaker 1: enough time to tease the next segment blameing the structural
Speaker 1: slab aside. I want to get back into the esthetic stuff.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about cracks, and we've talked about the
Speaker 1: proper way. We've talked about the ideal, the situation for
Speaker 1: pouring and all of that, and maybe we can touch
Speaker 1: a little bit more on that some other weather conditions
Speaker 1: that are problematic. But I want to talk about finishes,
Speaker 1: your favorite finishes and your least favorite finishes. Now, why
Speaker 1: should that matter to me? I'm a designer and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to give my clients the finish they want.
Speaker 1: But the fact the matter is some finishes perform better
Speaker 1: than others in the long term. Some finishes promise a
Speaker 1: lot and in my opinion, end up delivering far less
Speaker 1: than what they promise. So I want everybody to hear
Speaker 1: from you, from your vast experience, the kind of concrete
Speaker 1: finishes that you like the most, sand finish, broom finish,
Speaker 1: stamped concrete, exposed aggregate. What are these things, how do
Speaker 1: they work? And in your experience, which are the ones
Speaker 1: that really hold up to everything they promise and what
Speaker 1: falls short. We will talk about that right on the
Speaker 1: other side of the news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 2: KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1: You are home. I hope you feel home. That's my goal.
Speaker 1: Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer. We spend
Speaker 1: every minute of this program every weekend on Saturday mornings
Speaker 1: from six to eight and Sundays from nine to noon
Speaker 1: talking about your home. It's design. We talk about it
Speaker 1: all the way from its architecture down to the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of home repair, home construction, inside, outside, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's all about your house and your home and taking
Speaker 1: your ordinary house and turning it into hopefully an extraordinary home.
Speaker 1: One of the most basic and fundamental elements, whether it's
Speaker 1: in the slab itself or in the outside decorative flatwork,
Speaker 1: is concrete. Concrete is just simply one of the most
Speaker 1: important things that we do on planet Earth, and one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things that we do. It's been a
Speaker 1: great show so far. We're turning the corner around eleven
Speaker 1: thirty here and I have in studio with me my
Speaker 1: very special guest, Chris Carson. Fantastic Concrete and masonry contractor.
Speaker 1: And we've been talking all things concrete, So Chris, now
Speaker 1: let's get back out into the decorative side of things.
Speaker 1: As I said before the break, from a design perspective,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of options for finishes of concrete,
Speaker 1: and as a designer, there are so many options that
Speaker 1: it might be tempting if I wasn't anchored in the
Speaker 1: builder side of me, to just say yes to anything
Speaker 1: that a client is looking for. But there are finishes
Speaker 1: that I've encountered over the years that I like definitely
Speaker 1: better and worse when it comes to concrete. And I'm
Speaker 1: interested from your perspective if there are finishes that you
Speaker 1: like for better or worse. And it's not that Chris's
Speaker 1: taste or my taste should determine your taste, but you
Speaker 1: should listen to some experts who have some serious experience
Speaker 1: with it in terms of maybe that finish is not
Speaker 1: going to follow through with everything that it's promising. So
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from you, what, by the way,
Speaker 1: what so, what is your favorite concrete finish? I think
Speaker 1: most people have seen all of them, whether they realize
Speaker 1: it or not. Probably not, but most people have encountered
Speaker 1: all the finishes. They just may not know what it
Speaker 1: is that they're looking at. But what's your favorite finish for?
Speaker 3: Right? We have so many options now. The thing that
Speaker 3: you need to look at it also is the longevity
Speaker 3: of the looks, whether or not it's going to fade,
Speaker 3: and what's going to happen in the future with this
Speaker 3: type of finish you've created. There's finishes now, an exposed
Speaker 3: agg again and finish, a sand finish that those involve
Speaker 3: a chemical that we put on and wash off the
Speaker 3: next morning and expose Maybe a sand finish would be
Speaker 3: exposing the very top layer of the concrete into a
Speaker 3: porous sand finish, and then you can go deeper into
Speaker 3: that into the aggregant. That is a look very popular
Speaker 3: is the stamp. Stamp colored finishes. Those to me and
Speaker 3: after doing this all those years, I come back and
Speaker 3: look at them underneath the patio cover. They look beautiful.
Speaker 3: With the colors put out in the sun. They're faded.
Speaker 3: People want to know what can I do? This looks terrible.
Speaker 3: It's all watched out For that reason alone, right there,
Speaker 3: I would tend to stay away from the stamp and
Speaker 3: the coloring. Sometimes it works on a house, or sometimes
Speaker 3: you have it and you have to match it. But
Speaker 3: to come back and put a sealer on it and recolor,
Speaker 3: you're going to be married to that and it's going
Speaker 3: to be a constant thing, moving furniture, pressure watching, ceiling coloring.
Speaker 3: Where a sand finish and other types of finishes don't
Speaker 3: require anything you come back in ten years. They look
Speaker 3: just like that, you know, other than your just standard
Speaker 3: broom finishes. But people want options with their house. They
Speaker 3: want something that looks good. They want to put in
Speaker 3: a new backyard, a new back patio, definitely put in
Speaker 3: a kicked up finish. There's so many alternatives, but you
Speaker 3: want something that you aren't going to come back in
Speaker 3: five or eight years and go goud. It's all getting
Speaker 3: bleached out, but it looks great under the cover. Right,
Speaker 3: I didn't finished, is my answer to your question.
Speaker 1: All right, so I knew you were gonna rag on
Speaker 1: stamped concrete because here is the thing I think my
Speaker 1: experience has been in working with most homeowners that I
Speaker 1: think right now, most of our listeners would prior to
Speaker 1: this conversation, at this moment right here, would assume that
Speaker 1: a stamped concrete finishes the pinnacle of concrete finishes, and
Speaker 1: what y'all are not aware of is within the industry itself,
Speaker 1: it is the finish that makes most of us roll
Speaker 1: our eyes the most because of everything that Chris just
Speaker 1: talked about. Well, so let me talk from a design perspective.
Speaker 1: From a design perspective, stamped concrete is usually not my
Speaker 1: first go to, never my first go to at all,
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. One, it is an attempt
Speaker 1: to emulate another material, and as a designer, I would
Speaker 1: rather just use the other material. In other words, a
Speaker 1: stamped concrete is trying to look like a cobble, or
Speaker 1: it's trying to look like a flagstone, or it's trying
Speaker 1: to look like some kind of a natural stone finish.
Speaker 1: So we have the stamps, and we have the mats,
Speaker 1: and we press in and we emboss the top of
Speaker 1: the concrete, and then if we really want to go
Speaker 1: to the nth degree, there are powders and color additives
Speaker 1: that are put on the surface that affect the surface
Speaker 1: color to try and get that stony two or three
Speaker 1: tone finish, and believe me, it can be done beautifully.
Speaker 1: I've seen Chris's stuff look beautiful. But the point is
Speaker 1: every one of those additional elements can react differently to time,
Speaker 1: to UV, light from the sun, uneven, fading and blotching
Speaker 1: and all, I mean, just all sorts of stuff. So
Speaker 1: it really the big secret is within the industry, it's
Speaker 1: the least desired finish within the industry.
Speaker 3: And now also with pavers, they seem to be quite
Speaker 3: popular for many reasons. Just talking about the color with pavers,
Speaker 3: it's so dense. Pavers don't have the qualities of concrete.
Speaker 3: They don't fade as much in pavers. The colors, You're
Speaker 3: going to get a lot more time out of your
Speaker 3: pavers with the color almost no problem. I haven't seen
Speaker 3: pavers completely fail with their colors make a stamp concrete.
Speaker 3: And also the pavers another benefit. Hey, if you've got
Speaker 3: a tree root that grows underneath your driveway sad lab
Speaker 3: and it's all lifted, you pull the papers up, you
Speaker 3: put them back down, you take the roots out. You
Speaker 3: never know anything that happens pavers. You know what, within
Speaker 3: the last ten fifteen years, you're starting to see a
Speaker 3: lot more people doing pavers. They've been around for a while,
Speaker 3: but now they're starting to make more sense. With trees,
Speaker 3: which you're in getting bigger trees are our number one
Speaker 3: caused tree roots probably most concrete crackings.
Speaker 1: So absolutely a no brainer. If you're thinking about a
Speaker 1: concrete driveway that is supposed to emulate cobble, then just
Speaker 1: do it in pavers. Because you talk about papers been
Speaker 1: around for a long time. Pavers are as old as
Speaker 1: paving gets because essentially a modern day concrete paver is
Speaker 1: the modern version of cobblestone. I mean, and what are
Speaker 1: the advantages? As Chris said, these are individual units. Now
Speaker 1: we're back to that definition of masonry. These are individual
Speaker 1: units that are going into a driveway or a patio,
Speaker 1: and if anything ever needed to be dealt with underneath,
Speaker 1: we can literally unzip those units, set them aside, get underneath,
Speaker 1: do whatever needs to be done, cut that tree root,
Speaker 1: move that sewer line, and then literally put them back
Speaker 1: into place again. And there's no cracking in a paver
Speaker 1: or driveway because as the settling or whatever minute things happen,
Speaker 1: they just it's absorbed in all of those joints. And
Speaker 1: so that's another reason why stamped concrete is just not
Speaker 1: necessary on this level. So it may come as a
Speaker 1: shock to everybody to find out that we're not big
Speaker 1: fans of stamp concrete. But hopefully it's it's an educational
Speaker 1: one because down the line the problems with fading and
Speaker 1: modeling and all of the above. Now you said you
Speaker 1: like a sand finish, I love a sand finish. I
Speaker 1: also love exposed aggregate. I want to explain that process
Speaker 1: a little bit clearer for everybody so that they understand that.
Speaker 1: I think we're just going to have enough time to
Speaker 1: do that before we are out today. So hold tight
Speaker 1: if you want to hear how and why these are
Speaker 1: far more reliable and I think more beautiful finishes. Number one,
Speaker 1: you already know that I've showed my hand because I
Speaker 1: think if we use concrete, let's just not hide it.
Speaker 1: Let's use concrete, and let's use concrete in its most
Speaker 1: beautiful forms. Otherwise, if we want a flagstone driveway, let's
Speaker 1: buy some flagstone right and just make a flagstone driveway.
Speaker 1: It'll hold up much better than a stamped version of
Speaker 1: flagstone long term. But if we're the other advantage of
Speaker 1: a beautifully finished concrete driveway is they're not that expensive
Speaker 1: to achieve. No, I mean we're talking of sand or
Speaker 1: an aggregate exposed aggregate finish. It's just a couple extra steps.
Speaker 1: We're going to be done that day at the same time. Yeah, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have some chemic goals. You have some release or
Speaker 1: whatever it's going to be to retard that concrete so
Speaker 1: we can wash it to get the effect that we want,
Speaker 1: but not that much effort to make concrete look different.
Speaker 1: It's all going to be done, you Port seven. It's
Speaker 1: all gonna be done at twelve one o'clock. I don't
Speaker 1: care what what we're gonna do. You're gonna have You're
Speaker 1: gonna have your concrete at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be out of your hair all right.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're gonna explain how that particular
Speaker 1: set of finishes work. Uh uh, and we're gonna wrap
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 2: KFI A M six forty.
Speaker 1: Here we are final segment of the show. But don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere because I am taking this content all the
Speaker 1: way to the very end because there's so much, you know,
Speaker 1: and we have just scratched the surface on the subject
Speaker 1: of concrete today. We didn't even get into masonry per se.
Speaker 1: Uh and we're gonna have to come back Chris and
Speaker 1: do that another day with me. Is that okay with you?
Speaker 1: All Right? Everybody's loving you on the show. We're getting
Speaker 1: we're getting calls and emails and it's just been great.
Speaker 1: So uh, we kind of spent the last segment pooh
Speaker 1: poohing stamped concrete. Uh you know, not that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have its place in a certain place, but you and
Speaker 1: I both would you know, as builders and as a designers,
Speaker 1: we would rather go in different directions with concrete. I'd
Speaker 1: rather let concrete be concrete and let it be amazing.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like back when we used to foe
Speaker 3: our walls in our living room, right, Yeah, that was
Speaker 3: in That was huge. Yeah. I used to do it too.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean how many years ago was that?
Speaker 3: Fifteen twenty years? It stated, Maybe it's kind of like
Speaker 3: stamp concrete in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I just think materials if I think
Speaker 1: you can take a material and from a design perspective,
Speaker 1: take it as many places as it can go itself,
Speaker 1: and you discover all new realms to it instead of
Speaker 1: just the assumption, well concrete is just gray and boring.
Speaker 1: But hey, guess what we learned to do. We learned
Speaker 1: to stamp it and turn it in and make it
Speaker 1: look like something yeah yeah, but not right. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: on the side object of this, there are a series
Speaker 1: of finishes that you and I both love. A sand finish,
Speaker 1: an exposed aggregate finish, and a process called seeding. And
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna set it up here and then you
Speaker 1: can get in and correct me or make the specifics.
Speaker 1: But essentially what we're talking about is both a sand
Speaker 1: finish and exposed aggregate finish and seeding is we are.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is we're pouring a regular poor floating
Speaker 1: a regular poor It looks, you know, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it pretty much looks like we've just
Speaker 1: left behind a flat, old, you know, boring, normal concrete job.
Speaker 1: But right at the end because of something we've put
Speaker 1: into the concrete, either the size of specialized aggregate stones
Speaker 1: or a sand in bedmont in the top or seeding.
Speaker 1: What you're gonna explain a second. We spray a chemical
Speaker 1: over the top of that curing concre and it comes
Speaker 1: in many names, and there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: ones out there, but we just spray kind of Hudson
Speaker 1: spray or out of chemical over walk away, walk away.
Speaker 1: Usually come back unless weather conditions are making us do otherwise.
Speaker 1: Usually come back the next morning and pressure wash that
Speaker 1: material off. And what that chemical does in one way
Speaker 1: or another, it's a retardant in terms of it keeps
Speaker 1: that top little layer of the cement from curing. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: everything else is curing and hardening up, that one is
Speaker 1: staying vulnerable. And under the pressure of a pressure washer,
Speaker 1: we blast away that very top layer of concrete and
Speaker 1: expose the hidden treasure underneath, which is this embedded finish
Speaker 1: of either sand, which is a beautiful smooth finish, or
Speaker 1: the aggregate like the pea gravel aggregate that's in the
Speaker 1: mix of the concrete itself, or what you've seeded into
Speaker 1: the concrete the day before, which takes it to a
Speaker 1: whole different level. And talk about what seeding is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can keep going with this thing. Seating is
Speaker 3: a process where there's material shops now that just sell
Speaker 3: different types of rock or granite or glass or pearl
Speaker 3: or abalone shells. We take this stuff and we actually,
Speaker 3: like bird seed, we spread it onto the concrete at
Speaker 3: the right time after it's in our finishing process. Effort
Speaker 3: starts to get a little bit tight, and we just
Speaker 3: throw this on like bird seed, all through the whole top,
Speaker 3: almost solid, and then we floated in, get that cement
Speaker 3: over it and get it attached to the aggregant that
Speaker 3: we've installed, so it's going to here, and then we
Speaker 3: apply a chemical and the next morning we wash it
Speaker 3: and it's all all the aggregant is left, but the
Speaker 3: cement is washed out.
Speaker 1: Now, if you live in eastern Ventura County, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to describe this sort of makes sense to everybody.
Speaker 1: If you live in southern California, you know that years ago,
Speaker 1: I was twenty eighteen, I want to say, was the
Speaker 1: Borderline mass shooting at the Borderline Club out here in
Speaker 1: Thousand Oaks. Afterwards, our local park in Naho Creek North
Speaker 1: commissioned a memorial for all of those who were lost
Speaker 1: who lost their lives in the Borderline shooting. Chris is
Speaker 1: the one who actually put that memorial together, designed and
Speaker 1: put that memorial together. There are large granite boulders, one
Speaker 1: for each of the individuals who lost their lives at
Speaker 1: the Borderline, and then out in the field there are
Speaker 1: pavers of people who have signed the backs, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very very intimate, very very meaningful thing in
Speaker 1: between the pavers and the boulders. The boulders are skirted
Speaker 1: with cement with concrete, and Chris didn't want just another
Speaker 1: color element entering into it. He wanted something to blend.
Speaker 1: And so we have these large like you know, granite
Speaker 1: like you know, river boulders, and so Chris seeded that
Speaker 1: band of cement with granite flex down it went, poured
Speaker 1: the concrete, put on the chemical release agent. Left next
Speaker 1: morning pressure washed it off, and now those granite boulders
Speaker 1: are surrounded by these aprons of looks like more granite,
Speaker 1: more granite. It's like a seamless match between the granite
Speaker 1: boulder and the granite concrete until we get to the
Speaker 1: actual dedication pavers. It is beautiful, it is gorgeous, and
Speaker 1: it's concrete. Yeah, and it's the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: can be done with concrete these days. I think it's
Speaker 1: just a stunning example of exactly So that's a good
Speaker 1: example of seating. Right. So you're pouring out the concrete
Speaker 1: per us, and right as you're starting to float in
Speaker 1: the finish, when it's time to you know, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna be sprinkling like Bert, you know, just casting
Speaker 1: out all of this stuff. And it's not superficial. You're
Speaker 1: embedding it down. You're kind of trowling it down in
Speaker 1: for floating is what we call. But we're embedding it
Speaker 1: in the concrete. And then that chemical release agent is
Speaker 1: going to allow us the next morning to re expose it.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't come off and it doesn't wear. It's granted, yes,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna color fade over time. That's not a
Speaker 1: die or a powder or anything. It's more stone on
Speaker 1: the cement. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: And by the way, that was just an absolutely beautiful job.
Speaker 3: Chris, thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, here we are at the end of
Speaker 1: another three hours. Man, does it blow by?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: I will have Chris back on, and yes, the next
Speaker 1: time I have him on, and we'll do it. Not
Speaker 1: long from now. We'll be talking specifically about masonry. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about brickwork and all of that kind of stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: just all of that fun stuff as well. But here
Speaker 1: we are at the end of another program. I only
Speaker 1: have just a brief wish for you today, not a
Speaker 1: long closing thought because I wanted all of our material
Speaker 1: to get out so that we made it through. It's
Speaker 1: very simply this. You know, we talked about letting a
Speaker 1: material be what it is. There is something honest about
Speaker 1: really good design in that sense. Yeah, I love playing
Speaker 1: tricks on people. I will fake something when we need
Speaker 1: to fake it. And my general rule is the further
Speaker 1: something is away from your critical perspective, the more you're
Speaker 1: allowed to fake it, because nobody can get right up
Speaker 1: close to it and discover that it's not real. But
Speaker 1: that's not how life works. That's not how people work.
Speaker 1: You know, we live right next to each other, and
Speaker 1: for our closest friendships and our biggest relations ships and
Speaker 1: the ones that we depend upon, like the concrete under
Speaker 1: our homes that hold our lives up. You know, what
Speaker 1: it needs to be real and real does not mean boring.
Speaker 1: But the best thing that we can do, you and
Speaker 1: I in our lives is to find the most beautiful
Speaker 1: form of us that we can find the most beautiful
Speaker 1: versions of us. And you know, instead of trying to
Speaker 1: fake it, make the most out of what you are.
Speaker 1: I like making the most out of concrete and leaving
Speaker 1: it concrete, and I want you to make the most
Speaker 1: out of what you are and you will shine in
Speaker 1: the exact same way, in your own, unique and beautiful way.
Speaker 1: And I think that resolution is the beginning of you
Speaker 1: building yourself a beautiful life. Everybody, Enjoy the rest of
Speaker 1: this Sunday, Enjoy the week ahead, and we'll be here
Speaker 1: next weekend. And guess what's coming up next weekend. We'll
Speaker 1: be talking about the best of the International Builders Show,
Speaker 1: which is taking place this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 1: Huge show, so much to talk about. Both shows next weekend.
Speaker 1: Dedicated to all the little nuggets that I find along
Speaker 1: the way. You're not going to want to miss it
Speaker 1: in Until then, enjoy the day. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.
Speaker 1: Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty
Speaker 1: every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and
Speaker 1: every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or
Speaker 1: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.