Technical

Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter November 2022 Full disclosure: I was ransacking the garage trying to find that one missing part from our George Foreman grill when I uncovered a couple of collector's items. There was a slightly dented blue metal hard hat- an old "Jackson hat", a real beauty- issued in 1979 when I took my first concrete constructio...

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Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter October 2022 Question: We poured a cast-in-place concrete residential basement wall one week ago. The mix was a standard 6-sack footing and wall mix typically specified in our local market, 3000 psi at 28 days with a design water-cementitious ratio of 0.55. We stripped the walls this morning, and were surprised to see the wall s...

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Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter September 2022 Question: We are working on a large city public works project that has us placing our first foundation concrete in about a month.  We are inundated with design changes in the form of large "Bulletins" and sketches (aka "SKs") that are returned to us as part of Requests for Information (aka...

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Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter August 2022 Question: We are bidding the concrete portion of a steel bridge job and noticed the term "bold exposure" mentioned in the Div. 5 construction documents. We aren't familiar with this term, and how it might affect our concrete scope. Answer: The steel girders are called out to be fabricated with ASTM A...

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Jim Klinger concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter July 2022 Full disclosure: Quite a lot of ASCC Hotline calls include requests for technical/educational backup members need to submit to general contractors, inspectors, structural engineers, or even Owners. In order to be effective, such backup should be limited to a few pages, similar to our ASCC Position Statements. In many c...

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July 11 – ASCC has published its forty-sixth Position Statement, “Water-Cementitious Material Ratio for Concrete to Receive a Trowel Finish.” ASCC Position Statements clarify the concrete contractors’ point of view for architects, engineers, owners, and others.

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June 23 – ASCC has published its forty-fifth Position Statement, “Managing Concrete Projects: Concrete/Steel Price and Delivery Volatility Risks.”  

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Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter May 2022 1. Hotline question: "The Owner has asked us to pick up some post-award retrofit scope and attach the base contract concrete structure to an adjacent building. This added scope includes epoxying reinforcing bars drilled overhead into the soffit of an existing concrete roof beam. We have been told there are special...

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Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist The Voice Newsletter April 2022 Full disclosure: A wise man once offered the following bit of advice on how best to navigate the uncertain waters of concrete construction. "It's easy," he said, "you just have to position yourself to get lucky". So consider if you will, the following Hotline call fielded by the ASCC Techn...

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Jim Klinger, concrete construction specialist, The Voice Newsletter March 2022 Full disclosure: Over the past year, the intrepid ASCC Technical Division research staff has been assigned to cover a wide range of stories that directly affect the ASCC membership at large. In some cases, the background sources for these articles did not come from the concrete construction business per se. For examp...

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