Tie your own steel or bring in rodbusters? Curious what most of you do

On my crew we draw the line at about a full day of tying. If the steel is going to eat more than a day of one guy's time, I make the call to sub it out, and I've never regretted it. A three-man rodbuster crew will come in and have a wall cage stood and tied before lunch that would've taken my finisher two days of grumbling. I always have them supply and tie. Ordering bar myself to save a few bucks on the markup sounds good til the truck shows up short or with the wrong lap lengths and I've got nobody to call. When they supply it, the shop drawings, the cut list, and the mess are all their problem. I've eaten enough headaches to know the markup is buying me peace of mind as much as labor.

For the small stuff, footings and short stem walls, I still do it myself. Half a day of tying with a bag of wire and a pair of pliers is cheaper than paying a minimum call-out charge, and I can be done before the concrete truck is even scheduled.

On tools, I bought a battery tying tool a few seasons back for in-house work and it paid for itself on the first big slab. The guys still call it lazy man's pliers, but nobody complains about sore wrists anymore.

I'm the opposite on this one. I've tied my own steel for about twelve years now and the only time I've ever subbed it out, the crew showed up late, dropped half the bar in the mud, and left me with laps that didn't match the detail. I spent most of a day reworking it anyway, so the 'savings' went straight out the window.

My take is that if you're already on site forming and pouring, the steel is work you can spread across a couple of quiet afternoons instead of losing a whole chunk of schedule. I'll pre-bend and pre-cut on rainy days, stage it next to the trench, and then tying goes fast. A 24x36 footing cage for a garage addition took me and my nephew about five hours with a couple of spud wrenches and a bag of tie wire, and I knew every bar was where the drawings called for it.

The other thing is inspection day. When the building official pulls up and I can point to any bar and tell him why it's there, those visits go smooth. With a sub, you're standing there hoping their guy read the right detail.

Where I do agree with subbing out is slabs on grade with heavy mesh and chairs over a big footprint. That's just misery. But for footings and walls, I keep it in house and sleep better.

We used to do it all in house til a schedule crunch changed my thinking. Now if I sub the steel, I still get it inspected same day and pour the next morning, so the cage doesn't sit around getting knocked out of square by other trades. That was the real cost for us, not the tying time, it was rework after the plumbers or sparkies climbed all over it. One thing I'd add is get a few rodbusters lined up before you need them, the good ones stay booked and you don't want to be picking whoever's free that week.

I can't get behind the blanket 'always have them supply it' advice in the first reply. Around here the markup on bar through a sub is steep enough that I order my own steel direct from the supplier, hand them the bar list off my plans, and they cut and bend to it. Only had one short load in years and the supplier swapped it out next morning no fuss. What I do pay for is just the tying labor, which keeps the sub quote honest and small. Maybe it depends on how good your local supplier is, but writing off owner-supplied bar becasue of one bad truck seems like paying a permanent tax for a rare problem.