Concrete Slab and Camber

After the concrete pour, this will be the stage of the elementary school at Prices fork. The steel reinforcement helps to strengthen the concrete. You can see the hangar bars that run horizontal on the left hand side where the rebar circles around. These bars are used to provide support for the rebar to "hang" on.

The way that the rebar is oriented on the left hand side is called an open loop system since the rebar does not make a full enclosed circle around the hangar rebar. If you notice, the rebar is held together at the cross sections with small pieces of rebar ties. These are similar to a twistie-tie you would find at the grocery store, but much more heavy duty. The rebar ties make sure the rebar doesn't move when the concrete is being poured.

The yellow material that you see on the top right hand of the photo is a vapor barrier. Vapor Barrier is a plastic lining used to keep moisture from entering the building envelope. Although this doesn't always stop moisture 100%, it does a good enough job to keep ENOUGH moisture out so that it won't effect the building. Although, if the vapor barrier is torn or defective before the pour, the material won't perform like it should, and chances of moisture entering the envelope are much higher.

One aspect that is not shown in this photo(because it is not a large enough area or supports enough weight) are cables, or tendons, in the concrete. These are more prevalent in parking garages where there is a lot of dead weight, but also high amounts of live load. These tendons can be stretched to create camber. Camber is the pulling of cables in the concrete so that the concrete "bows" slightly upwards once poured. When extra live load is added to the concrete with camber, it then settles to level as opposed to being level to start with and then being concave. The structural engineer will inform the contractor if there needs to be camber within in your concrete.

Once the concrete has been finished, the formwork(plywood material surrounding the stage area) will be removed and the concrete will be ready to go.