Again with a late reading of a blog post, Dr. Drang offered an amusing insight into one of the properties of concrete.

When I was president of my condo association, we had a building burn down, a total loss for twenty homeowners. We had insurance, and back when Florida was in the business of responsible law-making, they made a provision in the statutes for excess loss coverage, such that if a special assessment were ever necessary to fully recover from a loss, it could be covered by your condo (homeowner's) insurance. We were fully insured to value, with a current appraisal, so we had plenty of resources to do a proper job of rebuilding Building 100.

Then I learned that all the top-flight design and build companies, or first-rate architects and general contractors wouldn't touch reconstructing a condo building with twenty owners and potentially 21 litigants.

So we did the best we could, with who we could get. To make sure, I also had a professional engineering firm involved in every phase of construction. The PE assigned to us, Bryan Busse, was on speed-dial on my phone, along with our attorney and insurance adjuster.

When they poured the slab, we had Bryan come out to observe the "slump test," which is used to make sure the concrete you're pouring is the good stuff.

Funny story about the slab. The building is really two buildings with a common roof system and an open center with stairs. The architect we hired worked off the original plans and made revisions to bring the building up to the current building codes; the county and our PE both reviewed the plans. The slab was poured as two slabs, with the center pour done later.

Only days before we were scheduled to do the second pour, the welders doing the shop plans for the stairs in the center notified the GC that the plans for the slab were wrong. There wasn't enough room for the stairs under the revised building codes!

Nick of time. I'm sure we'd have gotten a waiver or something if we'd have poured it and then found out, but who knows? Revised the drawings, re-staked out the slab and all that work and made the second pour in the proper location a week or so later. One of many delays.

But yeah, "slump test." The things you learn.

And it does take a team.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:33 Friday, 24 March 2023