Construction phase - form awaiting concret with rebar for custom home construction by Rick Bernard.

Q & A Construction Details – Concrete foundation walls

Construction phase - form awaiting concret with rebar for custom home construction by Rick Bernard.

This is an example of the forms set up for a concrete foundation wall pour. The weaving of horizontal and vertical rebar steel, which will be surrounded by concrete, and vibrated into a flat, hopefully smooth wall, with no rock pockets.

Rebar anchored into the separate footing extends up into the wall where it is woven into the mesh of supporting rebar. When these get tied together, and embedded in concrete, they are virtually indestructible.

This is a good time to point out that all concrete, when it cures, will shrink with hair line cracks. Reinforcing rebar does nothing to prevent these shrinkage cracks. In flat work (such as garage floors and driveways) there will be these hair line cracks. Scored joints can at least group this shrinkage together. Wire mesh will not eliminate these hair line cracks. The best thing to minimize the hair line cracks is compacting the subsurface, with water and a compactor if appropriate.

My experience has been, the steel reinforcing products make the repair work very difficult to integrate into the surface. Also fiberglass strands in flat work can reduce fracturing, however a drawback can occur if you are exposing the rock aggregate in the work, or stamping and coloring the concrete, the fiberglass reinforcing can rise to the surface (the cream) and fray. Not pretty.