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The inspection that changed how I look at rebar spacing
I was on a job site in downtown Denver about 8 years ago, we were pouring a foundation for a 4 story mixed use building. The inspector showed up early, a real old school guy named Bill who had been doing it since the 70s. He walks the grid and stops at this one spot, taps his boot on a rebar intersection and says 'son, that's a quarter inch off and it's gonna cost you.' I thought he was full of it, but he made us pull up three whole sections and redo them. Ended up costing the crew an extra 6 hours and the GC was not happy. That's when I started paying way closer attention to the little details, because one small mistake can snowball into a whole mess of delays. Has anyone else ran into an inspector who saved you from a bigger problem down the line?
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samthompson5d ago
Bill the inspector caught my tie wire spacing being off once, and I blew up about it too. Ended up saving our ass when we hit a frost line weird the next day and the slab held perfect.
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riley_coleman85d ago
Funny you say that, I had a buddy on a crew a few years back who cussed out his inspector over parging mix ratios (dumb, I know). The guy was screaming about "too much lime" but left it anyway. Three months later, that exact section of foundation had this weird spalling issue where the lime was basically eating itself in the freeze-thaw. He'd have been totally screwed if the inspector hadn't forced him to redo it with the right blend. Sometimes those grumpy old guys are looking out for you more than you realize.
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