Girl Orders Rebar. Adventure Follows.

My favorite aforementioned store (where I spend ~5k minimum a year) also has free popcorn. When I'm out working, that popcorn is my only lunch of the day...

Unloading a ton of rebar! Do that a couple times a week and you'll be one tough cookie!

__________________
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Its not really a big deal. It would be differant if you had paid for it and what not. Then wanted a refund. It is part of the cost of doing biz. At Least it was rebar. Its not like they will not have 5 more folks come in needing rebar in the next day or two. Now, they know how many are in that bundle.

Also, on pricing. Every thing is nagotiable. NO COMPANY is expected to give or quote the best price. That would not be very smart.

I have been known to ask for a discount at Wal Mart on odd items. Home Depot will always deal on price. MOST places are going to charge the highest they can get away with. NOTHING wrong with that at all.

GIRL orders rebar.

That says enough with the first word. My DW has found out many times that she NEVER gets the best price for building materials because she is a GIRL. In fact they sometimes try to slip a higher price by her if she is picking up what I had already had an agreed on price.

Its like calling for directions. I am sorry, but it is a fact. Women in MOST not all cases can not give driving directions.

When it comes to pricing. You try to get the most you can get. Very simple.

Women just seem to be targets for being trusting.

When I sold new cars, If it was a woman all by her self. That was worth 500 bucks to me. I knew I could get her into a car. I paid 500 bucks many times to new sales folks for their lot spot to get that sell.

It was almost always worth it. Not sure how it is now in car sells, but women never wanted anything.

We gave them a price and did out best to get them qualified for financing.

The women never tried ti get the orice down in the care. The never gave a offer for the deal and once it came to finance. They took what they could get. WE MADE OUT MONEY on the financing.

When I call Home Depot and ask their price for 300 T posts. They say xxx. I tell them I will pay x.xx. They transfer me to con tractor sells.

I tell this WOMAN that I will pay this much for what I want. She counters with an offer and I say yes or no. Simple. When I say yes, I give the card number and ask for the lot to be pulled. Nothing against women, but most do not deal.

My own wife missed one a week ago. This is a woman that dose placment and procurment everyday. Its her job to deal.

We had a truck that got jump started. We normaly pau 50-1.25 bucks for this.

They gave her a bill for 344.00 She paid it. I walked in and she told me how they over charged us. I was like and...........

Well she told me how much they charged us. I set down. I asked her what did you say. She said I never asked them anything about it.

I was mad. I told her call hat man and tell him you are dumb today and get that reduced.

4 minutes latter she had t down to 112.00. All it took was a phone call to save us 232 bucks. I do not blame the dealer that serviced the truck. I blame the person that settled for the price.

I also know. That having a woman do things gets some stuff done much faster. Most shops will get a woman in faster then a man.

MOST building supply places will pick a order for a woman on the spot as a man would have to wait a day. We try to send the wife in when she is needed. She is prettu good at this, just sometimes she trusts. There is no trust in a deal till you sign a check or shake a hand. Then the deal is done.

Okay....here is the deal with concrete...
1. No plant can tell you an exact time the trucks will be there because they don't know how long it will take the trucks to unload at the last job, so they don't know when the trucks will be back to the plant. They also do not know how traffic will be getting there.
2. nobody uses rebar in slabs anymore except for spec jobs. get mono-fiber re-enforced concrete, it will cost about 1.00 more per yard and is better than rebar because it does not react with the lime in the concrete and rot away like steel does.
3. Pump companies and concrete companies are buddies, each business depends on the other.....so let them work out what time the pump and the concrete gets to the job.....trust me, the dispachers at both companies are on a first name basis with each other.
4. In the concrete business, if your not a customer with a charge account you are not a customer who is always right. They really hate dealing with C.O.D.s because cod customers never know what they are doing, will never pour any concrete with them again, and the 2 or 3 thousand dollars you are spending on that slab is hardly even worth the time it is on the trucks to them......they have customers who pour 70+ thousand dollar pours on a regular basis, those are the customers who are always right.

Seriously......you don't need the rebar....its a waste of money except in footings and walls.

HMMM

i would have thought that rebar would react with oxygen when the rebar is improperly placed too close to the surfaces of pour...less than 2 inches of coverage. calcium chloride is the only other admixture that i know of that would react to steel in concrete. (lowes speedway accident a few years ago)

i would have thought that rebar is more effective to stablility of a slab than the localized effect of fibers.

concrete that has been bached at the mixing plant has 45 minutes before the chemical bonds start forming. concrete that is batched and not placed within a little less than one hour is considered "burnt" (bonds formed and mechanically broken by the mixer drum). strength will be lost. batch tickets show time of the batch..

normal spect for an excellant 4"slab floor is: 4000 psi compressive strenght concrete (or higher), single matt of #2 rebar, 14 inches oc. both ways. matt centered in slab. min. of 2 inches coverage. single or double trowel finish. curing compound or kept moist for 36 hours.

A neighbor had the contractors out to his place last year, ripping up the fiber reinforced concrete, and replacing it with steel reinforcement... the fiber only concrete had hundreds of cracks... and not the hairline cracks, but finger wide cracks. Was supposed to be stronger than steel wire/rebar, and was told it was ok to drive his tractor on it. Ooops... At least I was able to get several trailer loads of nice concrete chunks to fill in some of my pesky potholes.

Personally I'm going with steel rebar, mesh, and fibers... covering my bets... I've had so many issues with my current homes' slab, I want to do this next one so it'll be bombproof... almost literally.

__________________
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Cracking is caused by improper finishing i.e. to much water added on the job, layed down on dry aggragate, not curred properly. If he used the same people he will be ripping it out again. summer mixes have retarder added to it to give it a longer mixer life. We load concrete and it will stay on a mixer for several hours sometimes before being poured, the time and water added that is kept on the ticket is to give the concrete company legal protection incase the concrete fails. With the mixes today they are pretty much fail proof unless the finisher really screws something up......if you want indistructable use what the highway dept. uses, its called PCCP and sets up to 12000 psi in 24 hours.....at a full 28 day cure it is not possible to test the psi strenght because the concrete breaks don't have enough power to break it. Don't use it anywhere that you will ever want to take it out.....it will really cost you to remove it

I deal with a lot of different people in business and the KEY is relationships. You treat the people with whom you have an ongoing relationship very differently from those you do not.

I have some people for whom I regularly do 10K worth of work, booked on a phone call without a penny up front.

If I get a call from Joe Blow who I don’t know and have never met it is unlikely I would even reserve him a date without cash up front.

Someone previously mentioned Craig’s list buyers. These people are notoriously unreliable. I’ve had dozens of them tell me they are coming down, and only about a third or them ever show. I now tell them all, “we have no deal until you drop cash into my hand”. I won’t hold the product even for a half-hour. The first person down with cash payment takes the product.

Pete

sugarbush,,,,are you saying that you keep batched concrete in a turning drum for several hours before pouring? if so how does the concrete know when to set up......in two hours concrete usually goes through a precure and is starting to be finished....would it take several hours to set up if placed in forms? if so there would have to be a second or even third shift around to complete a pour.

i think spauling may occur from mis finishing...well actually from too much floating..but i don't see how a full crack could occur from rubbing the top finish... more likely the cracking occurs from "other' causes including drivers mixing in way too much water to try to keep the concrete from sitting up in their drums after more than a one hour wait.

sorry gonna have to disagree with you. concrete starts to set in 45 minutes and ramps up in one hour..unless add mistures are added to slow them down. ok different part of the world from me,,,the older i get the less i find out i know...

We run concrete 24/7, its the only way to remain competitive in this area. Unfortunately most finishers now days are drunk drug addicts who work strange hours to make fast money. The retarder will hold it based on amount added. We can put in as little to hold an hour or even enough to leave the crete in the drum and turn the truck off over night. It stops the bonds from forming until the retarder evaporates off. Without it you cannot even keep the concrete on the truck for an hour in the summer; it gets hot fast and as soon as it stops moving and hits the ground it sets up and is unfinishable. All summer mixes have retarder in them, usually 2% water replacement.

okda, doakakie,,,,never used that much admixture retardent in our area, but see that if the chemical bonding could be stopped for that length of time it might be ok.

in our area we reject concrete that is older than 45 minutes...maybe 60 minutes before placing. portable batching plants are set up at remote sites to keep road time down.

Thanks for the information.

I will 100% disagree with you, totally & completely. Some of the worst advice I have seen on this forum. Perhaps it depends on the area & this works in _your_ area, but as a general comment for everyone - hogwash.

Rebar is the premium way to go, that fiber stuff just holds the surface down a bit, does nothing for cracks & joint seperation.

--->Paul

I'm with ya, Paul. Rebar or mesh is required. Even that won't stop cracks, if the concrete is poured over a base that is not stable or is not properly cured. Even fibered concrete will crack. But the rebar or mesh will hold the slab together after it cracks, keeping those cracks from becoming fissures.

I used to know a concrete finisher who would tell his customers he guaranteed two things about the finished job: 1.) It was possible it would crack, and 2.) once done, no one would steal it.

Knew a guy who used old galvanized water pipes pulled from housing replumbs as his rebar. That worked, too.

__________________
Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

I may be old fashioned, but I think the more steel the better... and fibers.

__________________
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Galvanized is supposed to be a bad idea in concrete. I don't doubt it can work, but hear many times it doesn't work right.

Some folks have had problems with the fibers in a floor that is used to work on - shop floor. The fibers can be prickly. I suppose sealers or time will reduce that.

Concrete cracks, no getting away from that. The fibers only help for minor surface cracks. Rebar controls the movement of deep cracks, which fiber can't cope with.

--->Paul

That is why rebar is still used; because most people don't like/trust change. I have laid down and removed enough concrete in the past several years to know that after about five years the rebar is so rotted down that it isn't holding anything anymore. As far as the woven steel mesh goes if you have ever seen anybody use it you will know that it is usually laid on the ground and as the concrete is poured it is pulled up into the concrete to "suspend" it two inches off of the bottom.........than the screeder walks back through the concrete to screed it down and stomps it back to the bottom and it again becomes useless.

The mono fiber actually does a really good job at holding the concrete together. But the only constant in concrete is that it will crack.....nothing will completely stop that from happening.

Wish people in this area would reject after 45 min........would make truck turn over alot faster.

Since the guy gave you a better deal than before, and you told him you wanted it in the first place, it would have been the right thing to do to get it from him, or to pay him a restocking charge. Maybe he needed the stuff taken down two days ahead due to staffing issues?

I suspect the problem is that hubby interefered with your chore and screwed it up for you, and you flubbed the communication part with the supplier.

Pat

I have pulled out enough concrete over the last 15 years to know that Re-bar reinforced concrete is much much stronger then mesh reinforced concrete, which is much much stronger then fiber reinforced concrete.

Pete