One customer's question about rebar ties changed my whole layout process

Last month I was doing a patio job in Columbus and this older lady comes out, watches me for maybe 10 minutes, then asks why I wasn't tying the rebar at the intersections before laying the first course. I told her that's just how I always did it, and she said, 'If you don't set the grid right at the start, every row above it is lying to you.' She was a retired engineer or something, I don't know, but she was right. I spent an extra 45 minutes pulling up the first three courses to fix the spacing, and now I lay out the rebar grid first on every job, even small ones. Has anyone else had a homeowner point out a flaw in their method that you actually used going forward?

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williamd7021d ago

Retired engineer ladies are basically the construction version of a grandma with a stopwatch. Of course she was right, they always are. I had a similar thing with an old plumber who watched me sweat a joint and told me I was holding the torch wrong, then charged me zero dollars and fixed it in thirty seconds. Now I just hand over the tools to any senior citizen who wanders by, saves me a ton of time and a bruised ego.