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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ditchdigger who wrote (59216)	8/6/2006 3:05:45 PM
From: Don Earl	Respond to of 306849

RE: "Here in the green mountain state, concrete has now risen to $104 cu yd.." Yeah, like I said, I haven't priced it recently. Local outfits were starting to tack on a fuel surcharge to cover increasing costs to deliver concrete. RE: "Cost of rebar has not risen quite as much." I was paying about two bucks a stick 4 years ago vs. over three on the last round. That's a good fifty percent increase the way I learned how to do math. It took less than a hundred sticks to do my house, so we're not talking about a lot of money, but it adds up when everything has gone through similar increases. RE: "most residential foundations don't even use rebar, and if they do, it is basically tossed into the forms and layed on the ties" I think the hardest part about these conversations is that everyone (myself included) tends to assume local conditions are a law of nature and are universal (all evidence to the contrary). Where I am, rebar is code and you aren't allowed to pour until the inspector has signed off on it. The footing requires two rows of #4 suspended at least 2" above the ground for a single story, and tied together over lapping at least 18" on the ends. We're allowed to wet stick the verticals for the stem wall, and as I remember, those have to be something like 16 inches on center (I'd have to double check code on the spacing, so don't quote me on that one). For a two foot stem wall, code requires two rows of #4 tied together the same as the footing on the upright pieces, and we're allowed to wet stick the j-bolts for the mud sill and those have to be 4 feet OC. That all has to be inspected before you're allowed to pour, and if you pour before it's been inspected, they'll make you tear it out and start over. I suppose you could call it labor intensive, but it's all grunt work that anyone bright enough to drive a wheelbarrow should be able to figure out with about 5 minutes study time. I can't imagine building a foundation without rebar, even if it wasn't required by local code, or local inspectors don't check for it. It adds too much strength to leave it out, for what it takes to put it in, and it strikes me as a dumb place to try cutting corners. I use it in sidewalks and garage floors to prevent cracking, even though it's not required. Call it cheap insurance. It's not all that big a deal to put it in and you get a much stronger foundation by using it. RE: "As for the $100/ sq ft figure, you get what you pay for, and not much at that figure." As mentioned previously, that's a ballpark number for what I figure on materials and misc. - before labor.