slab thickness

[Matt Whiting]

Yes, unfortunately, a soft spot can go quite deep and be sizeable. It may not even be noticed by most excavators. Unless you dig down 6' and fill with gravel, it is hard to be sure that you won't have problems in the future. This depends greatly, obviously, on location and soil type. Here in PA, it isn't unusual to have challenging soil conditions. I figure a few bucks worth of rebar is cheap insurance. You still want proper preparation, however, I like suspenders with my belt for things that are hard to fix later. And cured concrete that has cracked and heaved an inch isn't cheap to fix.

Matt

[Matt Whiting]

Absolutely correct, but the problem is that you can't guarantee that something won't move. Thus a little reinforcement is, IMO, cheap insurance.

Matt

[Matt Whiting]

And do you sand those nasty ridges off the rebar to make them smooth as you would with wood? :-)

Matt

[RicodJour]

Much like the single guy with no dependents buying life insurance. It's cheap, but is it necessary? Too many people think that it is a panacea for all problems concrete. It's not. Just like painting, slab on grade results are all in the preparation.

R

[RicodJour]

Hell, no! That would take foever and give inferior results. I turn them down on the lathe.

Where have you been Matt? I'm guessing the spouse-enforced two week vacation.

R

[Matt Whiting]

Not a good analogy at all. I've seen many slabs crack and shift up to an inch even with what appeared to be proper preparation. And there is a major road nearby that hs shifted nearly 6' in one set of lanes of a divided highway. I'm sure the construction company thought they had prepared the soil properly also, but my point is that you can't always be sure.

Matt

[Matt Whiting]

Good guess. Yes, just returned from two weeks driving around the southwest in NV, AZ, CO and UT. Nice country for a visit. A little warm (I have a shot of the car thermometer at 108 or something ridiculous like that), but with the low humidity I found it very comfortable compared to PA with our 95 and 95 conditions.

Matt

[RicodJour]

I'm guessing Four Corners, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde and maybe Bryce. How much did you lose in Vegas? Oh, right, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. ;)

I rode my bicycle through that area one summer. Never got above 124 F in the shade. I'll take the humidity.

R

[Matt Whiting]

Well, this is pretty fat OT already, but we hit the above and in addition several things around Colorado Springs (Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, Cave of the Winds, etc.), as well as Zion in addition to Bryce and a few other things. It was a fun two weeks.

The temps stayed right around 100 in Vegas which was the warmest area. Colorado Springs was nice with temps in the upper 80s to lower 90s. Did have one whopper of a thunderstorm the afternoon that we ate lunch at Solo's, which is a restaurant inside an old airplane (KC-97 tanker). Man was it loud when the 1/2" hail began to hit the aluminum!

I'm not a gambler so I didn't even enter a casino in Vegas. The only money I lost there was on souvenirs! :-)

Matt

[John Willis]

On 30 Jun 2005 12:57:25 -0700, "RicodJour" scribbled this interesting note:

In our area, with the soil we have, it is impossible to "correctly prepare" what is underneath the slab. The black, clay rich soil we have expands and contracts so much, I remember, as a child, having soccer games cancelled because the cracks in the hard-as-a-rock dirt were so large a kid could have broken an ankle or leg!

In this area, post tensioned slabs always move and crack. Any slab that is built to FHA minimum standards will crack. Those standards must be exceeded by a fair margin to insure the slab stays where you want it, as you want it.

I wish this area had soil that was easier to build on. Doing any kind of digging around here is a major chore.

-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)