TRAY

Not in the least bit. I'll figure it out when the time comes, though i prefer to do my own design, but we'll see. I've been brain storming on doing a concrete spider web, cause personally i like to go outside of the norm. But sadly it seems no one else agrees with my visions lol. Like the alien soon to be concrete statues, people are like "what the ____ is that! I say it's a yard ornament, a conversation piece, one of a kind, guaranteed to turn some heads, but nobody gets it. Oh well. But i did get a few orders for the dragon concrete end tables(if i ever get the mold done) so guest all is not lost!

Anyway check out the awesome SHOW designs in this vid, it would surely suck to do all that work just to have to tear it all out lol

__________________

Olafhenny

__________________
The reason I joined this forum was to share experiences,
my own and those of others and to learn from them.

Olafhenny

Well, this is a gardening site and I should restrict my post to gardening related
construction. But to briefly answer your question, concrete has great compression
resistance, but its tensile strength, the one, which resists tearing apart is relatively
low. To counter that, we insert reinforcing steel there where the concrete would "open
up" under load. That means usually near the bottom of the layer of concrete we pour,
where it spans the floor below or in a driveway, to counter any settlement, which might
occur under it. In columns rebar is usually all around the edges.

For that you seek the advice of a geotechnical lab
The optimal mixture usually depends on the type of aggregate you use, i.e., the size
of the rocks and the courseness of the sand contained therein. A rule of thumb,
good enough for most purposes would be one shovel of cement for three shovels
of aggregate.

In premix bags that is all done for you and you can assume it to be optimal. Though,
since the maximum size of the aggregate is usually about 1/2 inch, the cement portion
is usually a bit higher, than in courser mixes.

Just one caveat: Here they used to sell years ago "fence post concrete", which was
low on cement content and accordingly strong enough to keep a fence post securely
in place, but not for much else. In some regions they may still sell that stuff. But that
opens up another can of worms, because direct contact with the cement in concrete
causes rot in wood.

Best,
Olaf

__________________
The reason I joined this forum was to share experiences,
my own and those of others and to learn from them.