did i mess up?

asewell77

asewell77

Roundtable Host 2009
cleaned a brick driveway today getting it ready for sealing. there was concrete sidewalk that crossed the driveway. as usual i just cleaned the sidewalk portion of the driveway too. i unhooked the surface cleaner, hooked up the wand a proceded to rinse the drive way down, pushing the sand back in the joints as i went along. when i got to the sidewalk portion and rinsed the sand off of it i was horrified. all the "cream" off the top of the sidwalk was gone leaving a real rough surface. some of it was spotty too. i did nothing out of the ordinary. i blame it on shotty craftsmanship or a shotty concrete mix. ohh did i mention the concrete is only a year old! so it shouldnt be brittle from age right. anyway, i showed the lady of the home and she looked surprised. she said she'd show her husband when he got home. im thinking this is a warranty issue with the builder. after i rinsed it i could twist my foot on the concrete and break off little rocks.
i guess my question is was there a way i could have prevented this. i always feel bad when im doing the work and something goes wrong even though its out of my control. and today i was stuck wondering if the homeowner was thinking it was my fault.
 
Anthony

The concrete should have been fine, however concrete will often not withstand the normal pressure that we use. You should get in the habit of checking any concrete that is not several years old.

Something similar has probably happened to all of us at one time. Normally when you are removing the cream you can see it happening. The homeowner may not say anything, but I would be surprised if he doesn't blame you and say you should have noticed it before you finished the job.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
asewell77 said:
cleaned a brick driveway today getting it ready for sealing. there was concrete sidewalk that crossed the driveway. as usual i just cleaned the sidewalk portion of the driveway too. i unhooked the surface cleaner, hooked up the wand a proceded to rinse the drive way down, pushing the sand back in the joints as i went along. when i got to the sidewalk portion and rinsed the sand off of it i was horrified. all the "cream" off the top of the sidwalk was gone leaving a real rough surface. some of it was spotty too. i did nothing out of the ordinary. i blame it on shotty craftsmanship or a shotty concrete mix. ohh did i mention the concrete is only a year old! so it shouldnt be brittle from age right. anyway, i showed the lady of the home and she looked surprised. she said she'd show her husband when he got home. im thinking this is a warranty issue with the builder. after i rinsed it i could twist my foot on the concrete and break off little rocks.
i guess my question is was there a way i could have prevented this. i always feel bad when im doing the work and something goes wrong even though its out of my control. and today i was stuck wondering if the homeowner was thinking it was my fault.
Click to expand...

Most likely you could not have prevented this. This is called spalling of concrete and is an installation problem. When concrete is layed it only has a certain amout of time before it starts setting up. If the contractor wets the concrete to finsh it, it makes more cream come to the top and if water is mixed with the concrete it weakens the finish causing spalling there after. Its very hard after the fact to tell the customer this as they think its your fault. The builder thinks its your fault and you end up being the scapegoat. I just hope you have in your contract that faulty workmenship is not your problem. You may end up paying to rip it out and replacing it.
 
I'm guessing that most of us have made a similar mistake at times - but I would say that the responsibility is on us to do a test spot, or with experience be able to 'eyeball' the concrete and see what it may withstand.

With what you describe, it may have been noticeable when you started on the concrete sidewalk with the surface cleaner. In my experience, as soon as the surface cleaner touches this 'weak' concrete you can see a 'creamy', 'sandy' colored water come off.

All may not be lost though, are you doing the sealing of the brick driveway? The sidewalk may be able to be sealed also, this will help strengthen its now weakened structure. Do that part for free, discount the service or waive the charge - whatever you can work with and you may be 'making lemonade' with a customer that sees you are attempting to rectify the problem.

If it were me I would keep in contact with the customer to get a better idea of what they were looking for to make it right and not did my heels in by blaming it the concrete contractor (even though it probably was shoddy work).

Good Luck - we're always learning!! :D
 
Steven Button said:
I'm guessing that most of us have made a similar mistake at times - but I would say that the responsibility is on us to do a test spot, or with experience be able to 'eyeball' the concrete and see what it may withstand.

With what you describe, it may have been noticeable when you started on the concrete sidewalk with the surface cleaner. In my experience, as soon as the surface cleaner touches this 'weak' concrete you can see a 'creamy', 'sandy' colored water come off.

All may not be lost though, are you doing the sealing of the brick driveway? The sidewalk may be able to be sealed also, this will help strengthen its now weakened structure. Do that part for free, discount the service or waive the charge - whatever you can work with and you may be 'making lemonade' with a customer that sees you are attempting to rectify the problem.

If it were me I would keep in contact with the customer to get a better idea of what they were looking for to make it right and not did my heels in by blaming it the concrete contractor (even though it probably was shoddy work).

Good Luck - we're always learning!! :D
Click to expand...



i know what u mean about the creamy colored water but it was all creamy colored because of the paver sand that was washing around. its that new paver sand that has all that clay in it that s a real pain in the a** to clean off dark brick.
 
Steven Button said:
If you have doubts about the concrete, bleach and rinse... Mind the vegetation and runoff - you can use larger orifice nozzles in your surface cleaner or wand to reduce pressure.
Click to expand...

:yes4: :yeah:
 
Anthony send me some Before and after pics. I will add them to my what not to do file I show my customers.......... What to soon? I am only kidding you live and you learn and make sure you have good insurance that covers this kind of thing. I had a issue with a product I used once it messed up some concrete and my insurance would not pay it cause it was not destroid only damaged. Needless to say I now pay more each month to be covered for damage too.
 
Always do a test spot with the wand. PERIOD! if you cant use pressure then use chems.
remember you can also tell the customer you cant do an area without causeing damage to it. Im sure they will understand. but u live u learn
 
Oh boy...I think everyone who does enough flatwork will run into this problem somewhere sometime. We have a few times...and got away with it. The biggest one was when we were cleaning a Mall complex a few years ago and the first 200 ft or so was when we caught the problem. Because of that it made the job easier since it became basically a rinse job after that. The owner of the complex(No middle PM guy on this one) never noticed it. Maybe cause it was in the back end of this complex but we got lucky.

When you do this alot you get use to what looks like soft concrete compared to what looks rock solid. Since this is a residential job you will run into this problem more often. Try using a strong bleach mix and spray it on straight. That aside there is a lesson learned here. You can't hit new Residential concrete with to much PSI or this will happen again somewhere sometime.

Good luck and let us know how this turned out because it will happen again and maybe some one here can learn from how this and how this worked out for you.

Another idea is to post some pics of this right here so maybe someone can give u some better advice on how to handle this.
 
I had the same problem once, same type of situation as John. It was a commercial building and some areas in the back. Luckily they didn't care and they were happy with the job. I always do a test spot now to try and avoid this particular situation.

If it gets to the point of replacement you may look at doing some resurfacing instead, they may like that look if they have pavers now.
 
While resurfacing sounds much easier, how long does this concrete walk extend past the driveway. I'd imagine you're going to have trouble blending it. Even replacing just the damaged stuff, you'll likely have to do the same shoddy work the builder did just to get it looking as uniform as possible.
Good Luck! I feel for you!
 
Growing up in the construction business I can tell you 95% of the residential and a lot of the commercial concrete put down in the past decade is junk. Primarily because of subs adding water or getting on it too soon. The builder is gonna lay it on you period. The customer doesn't want to hear they just bought a defective product.

I'd get a reputable concrete contractors opinion in writing before I'd roll over and submit a claim or get the checkbook out. What ever you agree to do to fix it get it in writing before you do it.
 
im not even sure if its gonna be an issue.i just feel bad about it. ill know more tomorrow when i go back to seal it. the sidewalk extends the entire neighborhood. the crazy thing is i just did the neighbors driveway last month and i had no problems at all. i think the homeowner told me that alot of sidewalk was replaced because it got tore up from const equip. anyway ill take some pictures tomorrow to post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top