how's it going guys welcome back to the patriot diy channel
one of the next big projects for our shop is going to be installing a mr cool diy mini split
air condition system and in preparation for that i need a concrete pad outside of my shop for that
unit to sit on so in this video we're going to be building a concrete pad outside of my shop here
now i'm not a professional at concrete by any means i've actually only done this a few times
in my life but this one went pretty well so this video isn't really so much of a how-to it's just
a how i do so i'm going to walk you through the whole process of how i built this small concrete
pad but first if you haven't done it yet guys make sure you hit that subscribe button down below
hit that notification bell and give us a thumbs up that really helps us out and just so you guys
have a reference this pad is only 21 inches by 42 inches all right guys let's get to work
all right guys before we get started i just want to go over a few of the tools you're going to
need for this project first things first you'll need some concrete mix that you can use pretty
much any kind you want i'm going to be using the quikrete fast setting concrete mix you're also
going to need something to mix that concrete in i'm just going to be using a wheelbarrow for that
some other tools you're going to need is a shovel and a landscape rake for flattening out the ground
underneath you're also going to need a drill and two-by-fours to make your frame as well as a level
a small trowel a scrap piece of wood for screening off the top of the concrete and these last two
aren't totally necessary but i did find that a hoe and a tamping tool helped out this process as well
now we need to build our frame now because this is such a small pad that's not going to be holding
much weight it doesn't need to be super thick so i'm just going to be using two by fours to
build this frame and we're going to be cutting that over on our miter station and while you're
putting your frame together you just want to make sure it's as square as you can get it
first thing we need to do is prepare our ground for the pad so i'm just going to be raking out
this gravel and rocks in the area that i'm planning on putting the pad i'm going to be
doing my best to level this out as much as i can but keep in mind it doesn't have to be perfectly
level because we are going to be using some stakes to make sure that our frame is level later
now that our ground is prepped and our frame is built we'll go ahead and put all that
in place now you can dig down beneath the surface if you want to i'm just going to be putting my pad
right on top of the surface and it's going to be surrounded with this gravel that i
already have in the area now a lot of people recommend a gravel base for your concrete pad
and since i already have some gravel in this area anyway i'm just going to be using some of that to
put into the bottom of my frame and then i'm going to be using a tamp to tamp it down and get it nice
and flat before putting our concrete in we're going to be using our level to make sure that
our frame is nice and level mine ended up being pretty close so i didn't need a lot of adjustment
but if you do need to adjust this you can just use some small stakes around the perimeter of your
frame and screw those in to hold that frame level while you're filling it with concrete
once we have all that set we can go ahead and start mixing our concrete i'm going to be doing
this one bag at a time to make sure that i get the mixture as close as i can now i'm just kind
of eyeballing the water mixture on mine but for perfect results you do want to make sure you
follow the instructions on the bag which comes out to about a gallon of water per 50 pound bag now
you can mix this with a shovel but i found that a hoe was a good tool for mixing this concrete up
once i have it mixed to the right consistency i'm just going to use my shovel to place it down
into our frame and spread it out the best i can and i'm just going to repeat that process with the
rest of my bags of concrete and it may help you guys to know that for my 21 by 42 inch pad here
it took just four 50 pound bags now this is the point where you could put in some rebar or wire
if you wanted to just to help reinforce the pad but since mine is such a small pad
and it's not going to be supporting much weight i didn't think that was necessary
and once i've filled the entire form with the concrete i'm going to go back and use
our scrap piece of 2x4 in a sawing motion across the top of the form
to flatten out that concrete and get it perfectly even with the top of our form
i'm also going to be using the small trowel to help flatten everything out
and now we
wait all right guys it's been about 36 hours since we laid our pad here
it probably still has a little bit of curing to do but it should be fine to go ahead and take
our form off and take a look at it first thing we're going to do is just take our
trusty hammer here and just tap around the outsides of our frame just to make sure it's
loose from the concrete and then we'll take the frame off and show you guys what we got
all right guys now i'm just using this hammer to kind of tap around the outside of our form
and make sure that it's separated from our pad and then we'll go ahead and take off that 2x4 frame
and then to clean up the edges a little bit i'm just going to go back with a scraping tool
and just clean up that top edge a little bit where some thin concrete had come over the
edge of my frame then i'm just going to go back and pull my gravel back around it with my rake
and we have a perfectly good pad ready to accept our ac unit
all right guys that is it for how i built this small concrete pad outside of my shop i hope this
video helped you out if any of you professionals or guys that have done a lot of this have any
critiques or any other tips that you guys want to share with us please leave that down in the
comment section below that helps all of us out and like i said guys this concrete pad is in
preparation of my diy mini split air condition system so that video will be coming up pretty
soon so if you haven't done it yet make sure you hit that subscribe button down below give
us a thumbs up and also it always helps us out if you want to use our links in the description
below so thanks for watching guys please like share and subscribe and we'll see you next time