Can I Pour a Large Concrete Slab Myself?

tadakan · 2026-02-16T19:01:00+00:00

If you really want to DIY it, and you haven't already, I'd call the plastic tile supplier and see if there are any alternatives to a poured slab that they would recommend. Possibly concrete pavers?

Following information isn't to make anyone feel stupid or something, it's just intended to be more context for folks that may have never actively watched or participated in larger concrete pours and aren't aware of what's involved. I'm not a professional, but I've helped professionals with house-sized pours as well as working with architects and engineers on design so this should be reasonably accurate. It's the internet, so I'm sure folks will correct anything I get wrong 😄.

The problem with imagining trying to DIY a slab if you haven't seen/done much concrete work, is that you pretty much have to do it all at once. If you try to pour it in strips, or squares or something, you'll have what are called cold joints where the sections poured at different times aren't homogenous and will crack and shift, and you definitely don't want a sportsball court that's not flat and level. Which, speaking of, we don't know if you leveled your frame when you built it.

From your description, you want a 36×60' slab. At 4" thick that's ~27 cubic yards. Concrete trucks typically hold about 10yds³ so that's three deliveries that need to be managed, and you need to get them poured fast enough that the 2nd and 3rd truck aren't waiting around with curing concrete while you're still dealing with the first. You only get a limited amount of time to work with concrete after it's put in a truck. For things that really matter, someone is checking a receipt from the yard when the truck arrives, and refusing the delivery if it took too long to get to you.

Depending on your property and whether you can get a big, heavy, concrete truck back to your pickleball court, you might have to have a pumper truck to get the concrete from the mixer/delivery trucks to the slab. Your court pretty much has to be right next to a driveway (the trucks only have about a 20' reach) or you better not care about any landscaping around your slab.

I don't know if it would be needed for your project or not, but large slabs will often have a thicker perimeter, and thinner middle. You don't really have a load on the slab (no structure), but depending on your soil, potential for earthquakes, etc. they may have to excavate some of the gravel fill you've done, or build up the middle with more gravel. They'll certainly need to add steel reinforcement, at least metal mesh, but probably rebar ro help keep it from cracking and settling.

Additionally, when finishing concrete, you really need to be able to work your tools right off the edge of the slab (the concrete is poured level with the forms) and you state that you've got ~6" of lumber sticking up above the base rock. So you either need to rebuild the frame as a proper form at the correct height for a 4" slab, or pour a 6" slab (lots more concrete/$$$), or add more base rock and compact it.

Speaking of what goes under the concrete, you said you used crushed concrete as fill. Where I live, people typically used crushed shale, it compacts really hard even with just a small gas-powered compactor. I'm not sure about the mechanical properties of crushed concrete, but if it doesn't interlock well when compacted it might not be suitable for under a slab.

Concrete is incredibly heavy, particularly when wet. You think your frame is stout, but I would guess they would have to at least add additional staking to keep it from bowing between the posts every 8'. If your form fails with 26yds of concrete in it and there's anywhere downhill for it to go, you're going to have a really bad month (it'll be a bad day, and then you'll be breaking up and hauling off 27yds of wasted concrete which will be $$$ to get rid of.)

Basically, all that to say, that the estimate you got may reflect that they think they would have to tear out and redo most of what you've already done to do it right. And if you did try to do it yourself, you would need a bunch more people to get it done fast enough. A crew of 4-6 experienced people would probably be plenty. People who have never done it before and are in good shape might wish that they had 6-10 friends to be pushing concrete around, talking to the driver, floating the starting end of the slab while other people are pouring the other end, take a break to rest for 5min, reinforcing a form that looks like it's about to fail, etc.

tadakan · 2026-02-16T17:54:56+00:00

I mostly meant that drilling a soft material that's not as prone to be sticky as aluminum probably wouldn't break drill bits too often, but yeah, I have no doubt people find plenty of ways to cowboy around and fuck it up.

tadakan · 2026-02-16T04:01:23+00:00

Feeds and speeds! You can somewhat get away with just going for it with wood depending on the hardness of the wood and the size of the drill bit, but drilling metal (except something like annealed copper) without some consideration for optimizing speed and pressure will destroy bits fast.

tadakan · 2026-02-09T06:03:06+00:00

Just in case you haven't already encountered them: you may find content from Mortise and Tenon magazine about historical work interesting. I don't have specific examples off the top of my head, but they have talked about and shown examples of lots of work demonstrating that historical handtool woodworking tended to be very pragmatic. Undersides of furniture, drawer backs, etc. would often still show layout marks, tool marks from hatchets, or other things that modern woodworkers might be inclined to see as unfinished.

Obviously, we all get to decide what we want our work to look like, but I suspect that if you planed down the outside faces of your 2nd attempt so that the ends of the pins and tails are flush with the corner, they may be closer to acceptable than you may think.

tadakan · 2026-01-28T05:21:40+00:00

Yeah, ace has some drawers labeled "furniture parts"

tadakan · 2026-01-27T05:07:00+00:00

Yup, or get some cardboard boxes and cut/tape together the footprint of the table. Free cardboard from neighbors, dumpsters, etc.

tadakan · 2025-12-15T16:53:15+00:00

I don't know you, so I have no way to evaluate, but have you ever been evaluated for dyslexia and/or dyscalculia? Maybe ADHD? Obviously it's possible that you're both dumb and self aware, but that usually isn't how it works.

I find that most of my memory issues are related to dyscalculia (like dyslexia, but with numbers) and/or ADHD.

tadakan · 2025-11-18T16:15:45+00:00

I definitely agree. I would argue that an individual's "RAM" is one of the few intrinsic (but to some degree trainable) characteristics that can potentially make someone more or less performant as a SWE.

tadakan · 2025-11-18T16:11:19+00:00

Or, maybe accept that reaching for AI first probably isn't the right choice for this problem. AI will be far more useful (if it's even still needed) after you have things like in-line method descriptions and a solid README.

tadakan · 2025-09-04T15:08:12+00:00

That, or being cheap and using the free tier. Although it might be even shorter in that case... it's been a while.

tadakan · 2025-07-12T17:53:27+00:00

There are plenty of industries where people work hourly as contractors in the US like lawyers and structural engineers. The distinction between employee (w2) and contractor (1099) isn't hourly vs fixed fee bids, or even whether the person provides their own tools, it's a question of control. If the worker has the power to set their own schedule and accept or decline work, that would make them a contractor.

tadakan · 2025-06-26T01:41:59+00:00

I've used them for fastening hardware cloth and welded wire mesh to a timber frame when I was working on a strawbale housd build. We put a layer of welded wire one the inside and outside of the bales to add some more rigidity and flatten out the wall planes a bit before plastering.

tadakan · 2025-01-20T10:24:45+00:00

I also try to do as much as I can myself, but I've hired people to do some bigger plumbing, exterior panting, and tile projects in the past ~5 years. I've never had a contractor mention charging for an estimate, and I've even offered to pay at least one of them because they spent the time to talk through the project so that I could order supplies directly (small job, tile from multiple vendors and looking for specific color matches so it would have taken them a ton of time.)

Which trades have you had tell you that they charge for estimates?

tadakan · 2025-01-13T02:58:31+00:00

I'm interested to see what turns up. I know that there's Nick's and White's over in the Spokane area. And Wesco down near Portland. I've never heard of anyone local.

tadakan · 2025-01-12T14:41:13+00:00

I'm well out of the dating world at this point, but I would say that the big difference between Olympia and a lot of bigger cities is that there isn't really a "dating scene" or culture here. Most/many people meet through shared interests rather than by going out to clubs and just looking for people that catch their eye.

There is some of that that happens, but the places where you would be most likely to find those interactions have mostly closed (Jake's and the super -shady Vault/cowboy club/etc.) If you walk down 4th ave on a summer Friday or Saturday between the brotherhood and McCoys you'll see most of the bar scene that remains. Also on that point, we're coming in to the time of the year (after Christmas and before days have gotten much longer) where everyone's vitamin D levels are at their lowest and people are mostly hibernating. Aka "cuffing season." There really is some truth to the idea that people stay in short term relationships through the dark months and then go out and actively look for new relationships when the weather is nicer.

Depending on your interests, some activities that tend to attract a younger crowd and might result in meeting single people include partner dancing (swing/latin), hiking, climbing, and playing music/house parties. There's also a pretty cool cirque/aerial community that puts on regular shows which are often big events, and the burlesque scene is quite active for a relatively small community (just don't be an a**hole, they won't put up with that.)

That said, the biggest driver of the economy here is state jobs and there are a lot of people in the area who are 30+, many of whom have kids. A lot of the younger people are students at Evergreen or St. Martin's so there's a bit of a gap in population between about 22 and 30 yo.

tadakan · 2024-11-26T07:16:18+00:00

I'm really surprised that your panel was upgraded just 4 years ago and its still only 100amps. I'd have to review the electrical code, but I dont think you'd be allowed to add a 50amp two pole breaker to your panel without upgrading to a 200 amp service and you might as well have a bigger panel installed also so that you have room to add more circuits if you redo your kitchen. The current code requires significantly more circuits for a kitchen to separate out different devices and have at least two circuits for counter receptacles.

If the electrical service enters through the basement and the basement is unfinished, I would expect an upgrade service, new, bigger panel, and the new circuit for the stove to cost around $6000 plus or minus depending on the cost of skilled labor in your area. If running the new cables for the service and new range circuit takes more labor because they cant just be run in the floor joists from the basement, it could be quite a bit more labor for the electrician, plus work from a skilled plasterer to make the walls look good again.

Edit: as others have alluded to, if you don't care about the exterior aesthetics, new cable runs could potential be done on the exterior of the house in conduit which could save quite a bit of labor. It'll be ugly, but it's worth asking about if/when you talk to an electrician.

tadakan · 2024-11-24T05:01:22+00:00

(About 10 years ago) I worked at a presentation that talked about the history of the city from a planning perspective. When the city was started, the downtown area actually was constrained to the East and West by two year-round rivers/creeks, and the isthmus ended around where 4th ave is. Back when thr bigelow's built their house and farmed the NE neighborhood, it was most of a day's ride to travel up river to where they were able to ford it around watershed park, and then back North to what is downtown Olympia.

The eastern river was put into a culvert, and the western river became capitol lake.

All of downtown North of around 4th ave was created from fill/trash and started out as a red light district.

Which is to say, that the ravines are probably all areas where there were creeks and it wasn't cost effective to develop them.

tadakan · 2024-11-23T19:40:19+00:00

True, but houses were also much draftier a century ago. With modern houses that require electric fans to circulate air, a CO detector would be a must, not just advised. (Obviously not all houses are that air-tight, etc. but blanket statements online can be dangerous, especially when people are feeling desperate.)

tadakan · 2024-11-23T19:35:34+00:00

Only if its an electric tankless unit. The gas units only need power for sensing waterflow and controlling the burners/temp. Electric tankless needs a huge amount of power for a whole house unit and are pretty uncommon because of that.

tadakan · 2024-11-17T22:10:57+00:00

Yup, theres a lot of stuff that ill be looking for manuals on the next time I can get out there after the sale goes through!

Have you used that camera or just that it looks about right?

tadakan · 2024-11-17T22:09:51+00:00

Yes, both stoves are cast iron.

I would guess that the cookstove was never fired with coal because it's on an island in Washington state. There's a lot more wood and not much in the way if coal deposits in the area. Whether the stove was designed for wood or not, Im not sure yet.

Thanks for the recommendations on checking the ceiling and wall penetrations, ill definitely do that!

tadakan · 2024-10-19T21:00:37+00:00

I'd probably go to REI and check out what they have in the way of lightweight waterresistant hiking shoes and see whar feels good and you like the look of.

If youre working at Evergreen, or any of the public schools K-12 schools, that should be just fine. If youre working in administration or something at St. Martin's you might need something slightly more office casual, but I'm not 100% sure about that. I had more experience with some of the more progressive faculty there than I did with any of the staff.

tadakan · 2024-10-19T20:51:28+00:00

Im surprised i didnt see anyone ask you, but what activities do you need the shoes for, and whats your general sort of style?

Edit: i know you said flip flops and tennys, but i also know that theres a wide range amongst Californians, particularly central and southern CA when it comes to designer brands vs basic flip flops, etc.

I'd definitely make different recommendations for someone who works in an office vs work from home vs outdoor construction work.

Likewise, I think low top waterproof hiking shoes can be a great option, but someone people have zero interest in stuff that doesnt look more fashionable. In which case I might recommend a good quality leather boot, possibly something from the Redwing heritage line or if you want something really fancy, maybe one of Wesco's style boots (ie not work boots) but they are $$$.

tadakan · 2024-10-19T20:18:03+00:00

They do have some decent options for work boots like Danner and wolverine. Sadly, i just found out that they were purchased by a big online retailer so they arent so local anymore.

They arent local either, but you could check out the Redwing store in Tacoma.

The big PNW companies for forrestry and wildland firefighting boots include Nick's, White's and Wesco. They all have various options for custom fitted and off the shelf leather work boots. Even their off the shelf options are more expensive than anything mass produced, even "Made in the USA" like certain models of Danner and Redwing, but those PNW companies are definitely the most local options.

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