That inspector flagged my rebar spacing and made me redo 40% of the slab

He walked in, looked at the grid for 30 seconds, and said 'these are 14 inches apart, spec says 12.' I had to pull every third bar and re-lay them on a Friday afternoon... never again will I let the crew eyeball layout. Anyone else had an inspector catch something that seemed small but cost you a whole day?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendy_bell838d ago

Tbh I'm gonna play devil's advocate here and say the inspector was totally right. You paid for a spec'd slab with 12 inch spacing, and the crew gave you 14. That's like paying for a dozen eggs and getting ten. Yeah it cost you a Friday, but that inspector saved your ass from a slab that couldve cracked or settled wrong down the road. I've seen guys try to argue over half an inch and end up with a whole driveway that looked like a spiderweb a year later.

jones.angela7d ago

@wendy_bell83 makes a solid point about the inspector catching a real issue, but the egg comparison is a little off. A dozen eggs is 12 eggs, sure, but rebar spacing isn't a count - it's an inch or two gap difference across a whole slab. If you had 14 inch spacing, that's about 16% less steel than spec, not just two eggs short. Still a big deal for cracking, but it's more like getting 10 eggs and paying for 12, not 10 instead of 12. Either way, that Friday redo probably saved a headache next summer.