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Had a slab heave on me last week and I almost lost the pour
I was finishing a 30x40 garage floor in Phoenix last Tuesday, everything was going smooth until I hit a spot near the back corner where the subgrade wasn't compacted right. The concrete started pushing up about 2 inches right as I was pulling a bull float over it. I panicked and stabbed a rebar stake through it to hold it down but that just made a mess. My foreman saw what happened and told me to stop and cut that section out before it set. We had to patch it with a fast set mix and it cost me an extra $250 in materials and a half day of labor. The homeowner was watching the whole time and I could tell he was ticked off. Has anyone else dealt with a spot like that where the ground just gave up underneath you?
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jordang321mo ago
Did you check the subgrade yourself or was that your foreman's job? I had something similar happen on a driveway last summer, ended up with a big crack and the homeowner freaking out.
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jordang3214d ago
Is that the same thing that happened to my buddy Mike last fall? He was pouring a walkway over by @paulschmidt's old neighborhood and hit a soft spot where a gopher tunnel had collapsed underground. His whole corner dropped about 4 inches and he had to rush to get more concrete in before it set. Foreman made him cut it out and repour too, cost him a full Saturday and a couple hundred in extra mix.
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paulschmidt1mo ago
...and that's exactly why I always wet the subgrade the night before if I can. Not saying it fixes everything but it at least gives me a gut check on soft spots when I'm walking it. My dad used to say you can feel a bad spot through your boots if you pay attention. Saved my bacon more than once on big pours.
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