A structural engineer talked me out of adding extra rebar to a slab last week

He said the overdesign was just wasting money and the soil report already gave us better numbers than I assumed, and it got me wondering how often I've been beefing things up for no real reason.

2 comments

2 Comments

paul_burns1d ago

I've seen plenty of slabs crack because guys trusted the soil report too much and the actual ground was different than the lab showed. Extra rebar is cheap insurance when you're already pouring concrete.

fiona_murray1d ago

That 3/8 rebar is only like 40 cents a foot, so yeah it's cheap. But the bigger issue is that extra steel doesn't automatically stop cracking, it just holds the cracks tighter together. If the soil settles wrong you're still gonna have problems, just with smaller cracks.