Establish Your Footing

• 1). Define the perimeter of the foundation by marking it with a measuring wheel, stakes and a hammer. Place one stake for every three cinder blocks in the foundation.
  
  
• 2). Excavate a trench alongside your marked perimeter with a mattock and shovel. Do not pull the stakes. Dig the trench down to the frost line and make it twice as wide as your standard cinder block.
  
  
• 3). Line the sides of the trench with scrap timber, creating a mold.
  
  
• 4). Measure from the side of the trench to the center of the trench, and mark your steel rebar at this point. Then bend them at that point into "L" shapes using a rebar bending machine.
  
  
• 5). Mix and pour concrete into the trench, filling the trench 3/4 up. Plant the rebar "L" shapes into the concrete, using your stakes to guide placement. You need one rebar for every three cinder blocks in the wall, and the rebar will extend up through the hollow spaces in the blocks.
  
  
• 6). Smooth the surface of the wet concrete with a concrete float. Pull up the stakes. Allow the concrete to dry overnight.
  
  

Install the Cinder Blocks

• 1). Make enough mortar for half an hour's worth of work.
  
  
• 2). Spread an even layer of mortar across the middle of the concrete footing with the trowel. The layer should be 1 inch thick, as wide as the cinder blocks and long enough to lay half a dozen blocks.
  
  
• 3). Butter your first cinder block by spreading two 1-inch thick lines of mortar on an outside end of the block, leaving the middle of the outside end bare and free of mortar. Set the block into the bed of mortar, pushing down on it and firmly tapping the top with the trowel.
  
  
• 4). Butter a second cinder block and lay it alongside the first, setting the bare end against the end-mortar from the first block and with the freshly buttered end facing down the row of cinder blocks. Scrape off any extra mortar squeezed out of the joints with the trowel and flick it back into your supply of wet mortar.
  
  
• 5). Continue to butter and lay cinder blocks until you have one complete row, threading the steel rebar through the interior spaces of the cinder blocks as you go. Allow the mortar to dry overnight.
  
  
• 6). Shovel in dirt to finish filling up the trench, burying the concrete footing.