[TheForge] OT: My floor is poured: the saga

[jerry Frost]

Another step forward, congratulations. It's good to hear about an honest
contractor. Wanna bet Ready Mix is going to be eating his labor loss? A bad
word in the trade community will cost them a LOT more than making everybody
whole. All it takes is one mis stroke in the batch plant to add accelerant
instead of a retarder to the mx design. Floors should have a touch of
retarder so the concrete man has time to do a nice job. I have a buddy who
drives a concrete truck and the guy at the batch plant loaded him out with a
gunnite mix. The buy who screwed it up had to jack hammer the mixer drum
clean while the company gave J a different rig till his was clean and
repaired.

How bad is the finish? If you don't wait too long you can smooth and clean
it up nicely without too much work using a floor sander. Get one that will
wet sand so you can wet sand the concrete or you'll have irritating dust all
over everything. Heck, you might be able to charge the rental and
consumables back to Ready Mix. That kind of mistake can cost a batch plant a
BUNCH.

Sounds like you needed a plate compacter to get that stuff smoothed down for
walks and such, a rake and trowel probably wasn't really up to it. If I ever
have concrete poured again I'm buying paver molds for the extra mix and
clean out. The clean out wash is excellent for stabilizing gravel or sandy
soils.

No comment about the pile on the driveway, think of it as a badge of some
sort. Maybe the owner of Ready Mix will come to a BBQ and ask what happened.
<evil grin>

Jer
-----Original Message-----
From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Andrew
Vida
Sent: Tuesday, September 2, 2014 1:19 PM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: [TheForge] OT: My floor is poured: the saga

Stupidity follows me like a bad cold.  Concrete shows up, we begin pumping.
In 20 minutes it is set enough to stand on.  We got the whole deal done, but
the finish is not the best.  Not disastrous, but a little rough.  The
finisher was so upset he refused payment. Ready mix company took 1/3+ off
the price, probably thankful I was not talking about suing them.

They also mis-estimated the load, saying I'd need 20 yards when 13 did the
job.  I had them dump the rest on the driveway, which was really wild
because by then the concrete was hot and it poured into a huge mountain
which I then had to rake into crude place like a wildman before it would no
longer move, resulting in thinking I was going to have a major heart attack
at 56, and I can tell you that I am in pretty good shape for my years.

So the finish sucks a little, but I saved almost $1000 thanks to their
error.  Oh, and they dumped about 1/4 yard of concrete on my driveway, which
was lots of fun to clean up and now the asphalt is streaked white, but I
don't care that much about it.  I have a floor and I am happy enough.
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