Tar impregnated sheathing ( black Celotex) will be just fine for
expansion joint. Many places sell it pre cut.

As to your project:

It sounds like you do not have a floor now.

I'm not sure what you mean by washed concrete, unless you mean
wash out. Wash out can be very difficult to work with if you do
not have machinery. Perhaps you meant washed gravel? Any coarse,
anti capillary stone will do - 6" preferred.

You would be much better off using one layer of 10 or 15 mil
underslab vapor barrier. Here is one brand from W R Meadows:
http://www.wrmeadows.com/wrm00068.htm called Perminator that I
use. Here's a movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPQHxemJyy0
watch out for that red tape - stickiest stuff I know of.

It would be normal to nail the expansion joint to the concrete
walls with a PAT




--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DanG
Keep the whole world singing . . .


"Jay Pique" wrote in message
...
On Jul 24, 11:39 am, "Ed Pawlowski" wrote:
"Jay Pique" wrote in message

...

Regarding the use of expansion joints in the basement, I
priced out
the "actual" stuff at around 40 cents a lineal foot for the
1/2"x4"
stuff. Then I got to thinking that Celotex is only $8.40 per
SHEET
which will get me 88 feet, so only about a dime a foot. My
question
is, will this do the same job as the real stuff? Thanks.
JP

May be OK indoors, but outdoors it would deteriorate fast from
the weather.
Anything that allows movement will work. Indoors, there is
little thermal
variation over the course of a year so anything may do the job,
including
nothing. Variation indoors may be 30 degrees over the year while
outdoors
it can be 100+ along with freezing water in joints.

What I'm planning to do is to excavate down around the perimeter
of
the basement a few inches and put in a drain pipe ("tile"...why
the
heck do they still call it that?) that leads to a sump pit I'm
going
to dig. Then I'm going to put down a few inches of washed
concrete
and tamp and level it. On top of that I'm going to put a double
layer
of 6 mil poly with overlapping, taped seams. This I will run up
the
wall 6" or so and temporarily tape it. Then I'm going to run a
perimeter of 4" expansion joint material against the wall. Not
sure
how I'm going to hold that in place - maybe tape it to the poly in
a
few spots? Ooops! - forgot about my new interior ground ring for
my
electric system. That goes first. So now I think I'm ready to
pour
my slab, right? Rather than mess with reinfocing steel mesh I'm
thinking of paying the extra 8 bucks a yard for the fiber
reinforcement material. I've got a couple guys to help that have
done
a lot of concrete work, and I'm going to rent a power trowel. Am
I
missing anything?

JP