So I am planning a hearth build for the stove in my basement. It occurred to me that a 4ft by 4ft concrete hearth faced with stone with a stove could approach 2 tons. I know the strength of the concrete far exceeds this weight, but I thought I'd do a quick post to make sure I am not missing anything? The basement floor is a 4+ inch slab, no reinforcement. The house was built 3 yrs ago, and there have been no cracks in the floor--which I take to be some evidence that the builder did things right and compacted the stone well and didn't do anything funky with the pour. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
