How To Form A Concrete Stem Wall

The walls are formed with 2x8 lumber stacked on edge.

How to form a concrete stem wall.

To form a concrete wall first set up plywood boards on either side of your concrete footer and attach them together with wire. When doing your own concrete work knowing how to form a homemade concrete wall is an essential skill. To make the wall as strong as possible pour the concrete in layers no higher than 20 inches working from 1 end of the wall to the. Footing is placed first using very stiff concrete.

Constructed correctly a form for a homemade wall will not only retain the concrete. Stem wall is placed second using wetter concrete so as not to leave voids. The other ingredients in concrete are water sand and aggregate rock. If the form is constructed incorrectly the concrete can blow out the form breaking it apart and creating an enormous mess while wasting much of your money.

The very next morning after the footer pour we arrive to strip the footer form work and layout and snap lines on the footer for the concrete stem wall. Then pour your concrete inside the form using a chute or hose attached to the mixer. After the foundation is stripped the 2x8 form lumber is recycled for use as floor joists. The stem wall on a concrete foundation is essentially the supporting wall that joins the foundation of a building to the vertical walls of the structure that is constructed atop the foundation.

My house was built in 1965 and i can tell its stem wall foundation. The stem wall transmits the load of the structure to the footing which distributes the structure weight over a wider area.