Concrete Pour Checklist

Why a pour is different from every other job

Most DIY work waits for you. Concrete does not. It starts going off the moment it is batched, the truck has other deliveries, and after a certain amount of standing time you are being charged for it. Whatever is not ready when the chute swings does not get done.

That is the whole reason this is a checklist and not a guide. The skill in a pour is mostly preparation.

Order more than you calculated

Add five to ten per cent. Forms bulge, the base is never perfectly level, and the difference between slightly too much concrete and slightly too little is the difference between a bit of waste and a cold joint across your slab.

Running short mid-pour has no good fix. Work the volume out with the slab calculator, add the waste, and order the round number above that.

Check the ticket before the chute swings

The delivery ticket states volume, mix and the time it was batched. Read all three. Concrete has a working life from batching, not from arrival, and a truck that has been sitting in traffic has used some of it up.

You need more people than you think

Even a small slab wants three: someone moving concrete, someone screeding, someone on the hose and the edges. A pour is the one DIY job where being one person short genuinely ruins the result, because the concrete will not wait while you swap tasks.

The part people get wrong is afterwards

Finishing is not the end. Wait for the bleed water to go before floating — working it while wet brings fines to the surface and weakens it. Cut or tool the control joints within the first day, a quarter of the slab depth deep. Then keep it damp or covered for a week.

Concrete gains most of its strength in the first seven days, and it needs water to do it. A slab that dries fast is a slab that cracks, and that first week is exactly when everyone stops paying attention.