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Super in Dallas told me to stop using cheap stakes on grade work and it stuck with me
I was setting grade stakes on a 12 acre pad in Dallas back in March and the super walked up, pulled one of my $2 plastic stakes out of the ground, and said 'these things move 3 inches overnight and you'll never know it.' He handed me a box of steel ones and told me he lost $8,000 on a redo at his old job because of stake drift, and now I can't bring myself to go back. Does anyone else have a rule of thumb for when cheap stakes are actually fine versus when you need to eat the cost?
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charlie7256d ago
Man that super did you a solid whether you wanted it or not. I've watched guys fight stake drift for years and it always ends the same way, someone eats the cost on a redo and then suddenly everyone on the crew is using steel. My rule of thumb is cheap plastic is fine for rough dirt work or short term stuff you're checking daily, but the second it's a pad that has to hold grade for more than a couple days, or the ground is soft, or you've got trucks running over it, you go steel. That $8,000 story is the kind of thing that sticks because it's real, and honestly the stakes are the cheapest part of the whole job anyway.
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