How to Reduce Costs Building a Concrete House
- 1). Figure out the concrete yardage needed for every concrete pour area listed on your building plans. You will need to know the width, height and depth/thickness of the concrete to be poured in an area. Multiply these together (using feet and inch units of measurement) and then divide this by 27 to arrive at the cubic concrete yardage required. Write down how much concrete you will need to create each pour on your building plans.
- 2). Calculate the amount of form material needed to create each concrete pour area listed on your building area. Form material is provided in panels that are measured by surface length and width. The depth of a concrete form is created by the use of different sizes of snap ties. For example, if you have a wall pour that is 16 feet long by 8 feet high by 8 feet thick and you are using 4-foot by 8-foot form panels and 8-inch snapties; you will need 8 form panels (4 panels per wall side) and 16 snapties to make this wall (figure 4 snapties per one side of wall). Write down how much material you will need to create each pour on your building plans.
- 3). Figure which concrete pours you can do on the same day given the amount of actual form material that you will have on hand. The more concrete you can pour at once, the less money you will spend on bringing finishers and concrete pumps out to the job site, and the better price you can get on concrete. Make sure that you look at the schedule for your finishers and talk to your concrete supply company before creating your pour schedule so you know that the amount of concrete that can be delivered can be finished before it sets.
- 4). Go back through the drawings and identify any pour areas where the depth of the pour may be lessened. For example, look for any structures like ramps, staircases, stair landings and ground slabs. Ask the engineer of record and your local building inspector to approve changes to these plans to use dirt to backfill deep pits to a shallower level to decrease the amount of concrete poured. You can also use additional concrete re-inforcement bars or mesh to decrease the amount concrete in the pour.
- 5). Watch your weather. Better to cancel concrete if the weather promises to be foul then to try and race the weather and pour it. The cost to protect wet concrete during foul weather or to repair concrete damaged by weather is not worth the risk.
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