eric_murray26•28d agoMost Upvoted

Had an old contractor show me a trick I still use today

I was working on a fence job out near Springfield last summer, this older guy Joe was running the crew next to mine. He saw me struggling with a post that kept shifting in the concrete before it set. He walked over and said 'you gotta brace it with a 2x4 angled into the ground, not just eyeball it.' I thought I knew better but gave it a shot. Next three posts came out dead straight without me having to touch them again. We ended up chatting for 20 minutes about different soil types and how they mess with settling. He told me he learned that trick from his dad in the 80s doing farm fencing. Anyone else run into random pros on site who just drop knowledge like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

theasmith28d ago

Honestly those moments stick with you, man. I had a similar thing happen a couple years back with this old concrete guy named Hank. He watched me mixing by eye and just shook his head, then showed me how to do the slump test with a coffee can. Changed how I do every single slab job since. People like Joe and Hank have seen it all and they're not trying to show off, they just wanna help you not learn the hard way. Love that you took his advice on the spot instead of being stubborn about it.

patricialee28d ago

Yeah the slump test saves so much guesswork and cracked slabs down the road lol.

jennys7220d ago

Oh come on, is it really that serious though? I mean yeah, slump tests have their place and all, but I've seen plenty of perfectly fine slabs from guys who just eyeball it and have been doing it for decades. Not saying you should wing it every time, but maybe we act like one mistake is the end of the world when it's really not. You mess up a slump, you crack a slab, you learn and move on. People act like a bad pour is some life-ending disaster when nine times out of ten it's just a few hairline cracks that nobody notices anyway. I get that the old-timers have experience, but sometimes they make simple stuff sound like rocket science.