Overheard a homebuilder say they're skipping control joints to save money

I was grabbing coffee at a gas station near a job site in Des Moines yesterday and heard two guys talking about a new subdivision going in. One of them said they're not cutting any control joints on the driveways to cut costs by about $150 per slab. That's just asking for random cracks splitting through the whole thing in six months. Has anyone else run into builders trying to skip the basics like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

james67226d ago

Yeah but was this the concrete sub or the general contractor calling the shots? I've seen supers try to cut corners before but usually the concrete guys push back because they'll be the ones getting blamed when those driveways crack like a dry lake bed. Did you catch if they had an engineer stamped set of plans or were they just running off a site plan?

parker_campbell26d ago

...and that's the thing, half the time the GC is just looking at a plot plan from the developer and telling the crew to pour whatever fits. I've been on jobs where the stamped drawings didn't even show up until after the first slab was curing. The concrete guys know better but they're in a tight spot, they gotta eat too. If the GC is breathing down their neck to get it done and the engineer's not around to sign off, you get driveways with two inches of base instead of six and nobody wants to be the one to stop the truck.