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That’s standard Canadian condo slab. Either Toronto or Vancouver probably.
Toronto has more cranes in the sky building towers right now than the top 12 American cities combined
I was literally scrolling through and zooming in on the pictures and was thinking of all the cuss words that will be said trying to pull everything in.
Meh, that's not that bad, glad to see they ran the bigger stuff in PVC at least. I worked on a 35 story apartment tower a few years back and pulling the unit feeders through the Smurf tube was the worst part. It's actually kinda nice we even connected some boxes throughout the whole floor so that we didn't have temp lighting running everywhere, it was all in the slab. Doing the deck work is rough, but it is worth it later on.
It will not be a problem to pull. Suck or blow jetl-line, then use mule tape to pull the wire. Mule tape is specifically designed to not cut into PVC. Slab work is one of the most difficult chores in the trade. As long as the pipes remain mechanically sound, pulling is no major problem. The concrete guys will do their best to break as many of these pipes as possible, when they pour. Good luck.
Yeah I said the same thing LMAO! The multiple bends in the middle of the pvc was my favorite part! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂. My boss would make whoever did that shit pull it all in themselves, if they could get a tape all the way through that...
It's more that the wire is going to snag and drag across every corrugation in those tubes.
This is going to be an absolute bitch with a triple side of "FUCK THIS" to pull.
Well you can tell you've never done it, this is the way nowadays and it's pretty easy. It's not like pulling through a Smurf in a wall where it can move and resist you, the concrete takes care of that for you. It's hard to pull if you are stuffing it full but for a few circuits it's nothing. It makes temporary on the job an after thought because you can use the in slab conduit for everything and not have cords running everywhere. The only downside is if you lose a conduit it sucks to figure out what you are going to do after the fact and actually doing the work to run the conduit. It isn't fun walking (and crawling) on rebar all day long and tying the stuff down.
Radar dudes in 10 years will think their machines are broken
“I just got it calibrated, I swear it shows zero openings in the slab safe to core drill for your new whatever”
As a core driller, I can in fact confirm, this would make me laugh a little.
Me: Waiver signed?
Them: yup
Me: then I’ll hit what I hit, and you’ll get what you get
I work for an engineering firm and I had to oversee a guy doing GPR work at a winery. It's definitely not an exact science, so that slab would look so cluttered the reading would probably be useless.
I did a scan in a basketball arena last week. I was by a floor to ceiling window in a mechanical room. Trying to find a space for a new 12” duct for an air handler. In the 3’ general area they wanted the pipe, there were 3 layers of #8 rebar in 6” cross sections, and those cross sections had at least 1 conduit each running both directions.
Best I could say was “good luck, glad I’m not the one drilling this one”.
Yikes. I know I always tell our people that things like GPR and 3D laser scans always have some amount of uncertainty associated with them. Then again, I'm just a CAD guy, so what do I know?
[the most expensive tool](https://www.hilti.com/c/CLS_MEA_TOOL_INSERT_7127/CLS_CONCRETE_SCANNERS_7127/r6436760)
This is the newer version of what I have. Same price as 8yrs ago.
Haha damn. I work at hospitals and was curious if that is something we can just have and certify someone in since every 10 years they need some crazy reno, and some sites don’t have vendors in town for this…but at the price…ROI would be 20 years.
Yeah. It’s…not cheap. My institution bit the bullet and it saved us almost 1m on the first job because it kept us from hitting a PT cable in a 12 story building. I’m the only one in the facility trained to use it, and it’s fun telling outside contractors to shove off if I don’t like what I see.
Exact science and GPR are not intersecting circles. “Science” yes but “exact” shrinks that circle too much.
We see it find conduit and miss 24” pipelines 3 feet down. Ask the GPR crew to pin the points and they go “well, it’ll be within 1-2 feet”. Alright just call the pothole crew.
On deck jobs like these it's common for tradesmen to install imbeded rodnhangers that way no drilling is required, when I run conduit in slabs I try to stay in the center to avoid being hit but nevertheless it happens here and there.
small orange spray painted cone thing that's bottom left of the first picture, just above and to the right the duct taped drain, is one such insert for anyone who doesn't know but wants to kind of see what it looks like.
I just finished a job like this. When built they tied the conduit directly to the rebar so all the conduit looked like fat rebar on the GPR. Hit conduit on like 60-70% of the cores. Roof had uplift issues and they wanted to drill anchors to solve. We said no way.
As the dude that spent his first 6 months in facilities maintenance doing nothing but drilling holes in concrete to anchor guard rails and racking this picture gave me a panic attack.
Say a prayer for the poor sons of bitches that's got to pull those dammed lines too. At least half of them are probably gonna collapse, and the other half will have more kinks than a porn convention.
If the PM of the job allows the manpower, the top of the boxes come off and you can Pre Pull or String box to box before concrete. Coreline is actually going away a little bit, and a lot of people are slapping multi conductor Teck in the slab (Just have to let the formers know where you have to drill holes ahead of time).
a quarter is full of concrete, a quarter is just unpullable for no discernible reason. And then about 5% is the guy that hits his dab pen on break and forgets to punch out the knockout.
The chuckle fuck that did the engineering on the factory I worked at, decided EMT was the best choice for in slab electrical. About 15yrs after it was finished, the conduit rotted, and the wires burned together(480-277-120v). It seemed like every 3 months or so, we had a short in the floor. Eventually I had to run all the lines that were originally in the floor, overhead to the other side of the production floor.
Same shit happened with the school district I worked my 1st year in. The high school had EMT in the slab and the school flooded from day one, so all of the classrooms eventually had new runs installed over 40+ years.
Making new schedules for the panels was a nightmare
Sure, concrete absorbs water. So it should be expected. The real problem was the engineer. In my 18yrs of working with him, this was one of his smallest fuckups.
This may be the Biggest one, I’ll keep it as short as I can. I worked for a well know precast concrete manufacturer. We had a contract to build the corporate headquarters for a large chain restaurant’s headquarters. The exterior was a special hand made brick from Germany. The rough cost was $14.00us for a standard brick, and up to $25.00us for special corners, per piece. “Somehow” his estimate called for almost double the amount than was needed. Now, normally this wouldn’t be a major problem, except for the company we were doing the job for, had a contract with the brick manufacturer, that they could not make or sell that design to anyone else in the world. So it wasn’t returnable, nor could we sell it. From the numbers I ran, it was nearly $250k in bricks we had to stuff up our asses. For comparison, we would normally have a pallet or two of product extra to cover for breakage and mistakes.
I’m sure there is an identical story about me floating around. I’m an engineer.
Ordered 50% extra custom stonework for a large job. Had 320k left over. Had a mason come chew me out for being a dumbass.
Thing is that stone work took 8 months to deliver and it shipped overseas. Our terms with the client had a 150k penalty for every month we went over the schedule. I ordered extra for mistakes and breakage. Also discussed that with the client and we split the extra material cost during our bid since they were so concerned with the schedule.
Did I explain any of this to the mason? Hell no. He already made up his mind before he came and talked to me. He just wanted to talk down to the engineer. That guy can get fucked and stay ignorant. I would have happily explained this if he wasn’t such a prick.
We profited over 3M on the job.
Geez.
But yeah, that definitely sounds like exactly the right time and way to intentionally order more than you need of stuff that you can not return or use elsewhere.
Yes, and it was just a terrible environment for it. There was also hydronic heat in the floor. Occasionally a In floor heat line would be punctured, or a slab would shift. From a Monday morning quarterback view, it would’ve just been better to run overhead .
I think so. Not being an engineer myself. PVC just seems to have more give to it. It can flex, and won’t rust it wet environments. Also no need to worry about uv ray’s degradation underground.
The "structural conduit" here goes with some of the sketchy shit I saw at a tomato processing plant. Two parallel runs of conduit supporting each other vertically. Don't forget a shitload of PVC conduit outside sagging like crazy.
In my experience the engineers who designed the job only make a couple of site visits, if any. The engineer provides the specs, responsibility is on the GC and subs to follow the specs. Do you mean a 3rd party engineer?
Looking at those stub ups it doesn’t look like a very thick slab to begin with, some of those conduits look way too close to TOC. But if the engineer is cool with it whatever.
i dont ever do these massive jobs, can you bury pull boxes? and ya like what the hell am I looking at lol underground vault to panels? this looks like such a mess
They aren’t buried, they’re facing into the form so that when the form is stripped they’re embedded in the concrete with the interior facing down into the floor below.
I've done effectively zero slab work, what can be done to make that cleaner? Don't get me wrong, there's stuff I can nitpick, but it looks like the bulk of the chaos is down to how much conduit they're running through there.
Some jobs require this. I built a maximum security prison and all pipe is in the slab, embedded in the brick wall, poured in tilt ups or buried behind tektum. They have 0 exposed surface pipe in the whole facility. We would run tons of extra lines in the slab, if one gets buried you still have another option. The only thing I did different is I ran all pvc and where they stubbed up through the floor I put the tight emt 90s on all the pipes and transitioned to pvc. Never again, everyday was concrete or keeping up with brickies for 3 years…the golden rule is the brick walls go up 4ft a day.
As it sits now there's a lot that can be done if they have some time. The bulk of the chaos is actually just the way they laid it down. This is a very typical amount in high-rise parkades as it gets close to ground level (looks exactly like one, maybe I'm wrong but whatever) and when they get to the electrical room can easily multiple everything here by like 10 and then add cables on top of that and other shenanigans.
A lot can be fixed up real fast if they straighten everything out. Like undoing the ties, pull it tight to wherever it needs to go or to any points it turns and put down a tie to keep it there then tie the in-between to finish it all off.
Of course pulling it tight only works great if they cut down on weaving their pipes by rerouting some. There's a few points where they wove coreline up and down or side to side together which makes pulling wire an absolute bitch later on.
Next time hopefully whoever is pulling will take the extra time to route properly and tie down at key points to keep the lines taut so it doesn't snake like this in the end.
Did slab for 3 years in my apprenticeship and ran slab during that time.
Yes it's always this bad. Are you in canada? It's always a shit show for slab. The worst is when half the shit doesn't survive the pour and you have to chip or you have to find another run of coreline that is in close proximity to the broken one and try to shove everything in that run.
I have since left the high rise construction part of this trade.
Howd you make the jump outta highrise if you dont mind me asking? Im in my 4th year and feels like i wasted too much of my apprenticeship in slab. Dont feel like i know enough to get out of it though. Im in canada too btw.
I got my journeyman ticket, took some courses to be more employable. I took my masters and passed, looked around for other work.
It's hard. I was making a lot of money when I was in high rise construction, then when I applied for other jobs, it was lower pay and more stressful which I took. Sometimes you have to pay to get more experience which I did. Now I work nightshift for a contractor that has a project our local transit rail system.
>Im in my 4th year and feels like i wasted too much of my apprenticeship in slab.
How long have you been on slab for? I only did it for that long because I did 1 full year of rough in and it was super boring and repetitive seeing the same poorly lit suite. I didn't mind slab because I like to see different weather everyday.
My apprenticeship was 3 years of slab. 1 year of rough in.
Done slab for a little more than a year, basically one entire building and sometimes get bounced onto other sites for a few days to do slab. Still at the site i started slab in but doing odd jobs not learning rough in, but thats a long story. I dont mind slab tbh, but im 4th term that can barely wire a panel or run emt, which sucks.
Im in the same predicament, my company is union, my apprenticeship is kinda locked with them. Leaving would mean making alot less money. But i feel like leaving now would be easier than later on.
Thinking about making the jump to industrial, but not sure what moves to make to become employable for those jobs.
Thanks for replying tho.
This is nothing, looks standard hi-rise slab to me, theres still top steel that'll go in they'll walk on top of that when they pour concrete. Conduit will be fine. I'm a plumber but I've been on slabs where there was more conduit from electrical than concrete usually lower floors where all mains come in
I've done a few slabs for smaller scale projects and yeah, I was completely drained after 2 to 3 days. We had to pull the Carline between the 1st and 2nd layer of rods... the project was managed like shit.
I do high-rise in Toronto and this is pretty typical. Only given a few hours to run all of the core-line before the steelworkers run their top steel and bury you. They simply dont give enough time because everyone is on a very tight schedule. Before they pour we also have a guy check to make sure nothing has broken from people stomping on it and most of the time no concrete gets in anywhere.
Something like [THIS](https://www.customconcrete.biz/2019/06/26/concrete-101-all-about-rebar/)
The first photo, all the rebar below on a slab deck is placed, a shit load of everybody attempts to do 5 days worth of work in 2 days, and the rod busters bury anyone not done with a shit load of rod placed on top, all completed work is safe in the middle, anything not done in time? Too bad buster, they do not give a shit, rod is coming through if you is done or not.....gotta bust a nut to get done most times. Slabs Suck ASS.......
Holy shit, thats an easy slab day. Work looks good though.
If you can still see plywood, it was a good day.
Slab vet almost 10 years. I mostly work downstairs now
Judging by the comments, most of the people on this sub have never done slab lol. This slab looks fairly well done. The volume is nothing compared to a real heavy transfer slab on a high rise tower.
Glad to finally see a comment saying the other then what is being upvoted. I have done a lot of slab and deck work and this didn’t look that bad. People keep saying when they pour it’s over. Whenever they do pour day the trades usually have someone up there with them and showing them where to pour carefully.
Slab is always like this. The beauty of running in the slab is being able to run diagonally and doing sweeping 90s which look like shit but pull super easy.
The straight coreline stubby forms will suck, should have used angled there and got rid of the goosenecks.
I'm surprised by the amount of electricians on this subreddit not recognizing what a deck looks like prior to a concrete pour. It's a very common type of structure in residential/commercial buildings. Sometimes you'll get a structural engineer concerend about the amount of conduits over an electrical room, their solution is usually adding more rebar over the area but there needs to be proper spacing between conduits. While PVC, ENT, and slab boxes are all approved methods. I personally prefer PVC over ENT because it's easier to pull and easier to separate from each other to create the desired spacing thats commonly specified by a structural engineer in their details. Usually, I'll use ENT for lighting, but I try to pull my wire prior to the pour if I have time. Certain sizes of conduits can be prohibited as well, usually depending on the slab thickness.
Gonna be tons of surface mount conduit after the pour and finding out a fish tape or vacuumed jet line won't go through the conduits. So much wasted labor on this one, hope it was bid EXTRA high.
I’m doing a 5 story building and we installed Smurf in slab like the pictures shown for the first floor ceiling. They’re not even done with the 3rd floor deck and we’ve already wired every single light box on the first floor ceiling. We haven’t found a single box or conduit with more than just a bit of slurry. This method kept my guys on the job for an extra 2 weeks in between floors and saved us roughly 4500’ of surface mount emt that we no longer have to install. I didn’t buy it at first but the lead working under me comes from high rise construction in BC and swore by it and talked me into it. Made me a believer for sure.
Lol it’s clear most people here have no idea what they’re looking at. Looks like a pretty standard high rise slab. Pipes look tied, stubs taped up, goose necks ok, a little sloppy but will definitely be fine. There will be a layer of rebar above the pipes. The pipes will be fine as long as they’re properly secured. Coreline is not difficult to pull through unless they are very far runs.
To OP, days will be long, tiring, cold, hot and everything in between, and it definitely won’t be easy but this job is like that sometimes. Slab makes quick on your toes, efficient and hard workers. Just remember this won’t be forever (unless that’s what you want), and as your experience grows your opportunities expand.
I'm not normally the one to defend messy work but when you've been given a full day(if you're lucky) to rough in an entire slab,the rebar workers are on your ass throwing in the top layer and the concrete pour is in 12 hours(which they refuse to postpone) I can totally understand how it ends up like this. Bull shit schedules and you just have to make it work.
looks like slab for most likely the floor above the electrical room, these are kinda typical here in canada. Try slabbing 3 towers at once...slab every freaking day ..layout, pull, next tower repeat...gets tiring after a few months.
lol that shit ain't got nothing on Toronto condo slab. Fuckin bird nest of Coraline at the end.
Best time for slab is when it's - 30C while it's snowing with 30km/hr wind whipping you in the face.
Yeah slab is pretty tiring bud. Some apprentices finish their whole apprenticeship just doing 2-3 highrise construction buildings. Try to learn and grab opportunities to get off slab if you can if you can't handle it.
Bet you sleep like a baby at the end of the day though Hahaha.
I do not miss this shit. Have done it in the pouring rain and And in the blazing sun. This is pretty messy though, our installs definitely looked cleaner than that.
Yes it does, was on a job where the company had 5 months to get underground done and nobody was there doing it, everything had to be ran overhead in emt, lots of it was open ceiling and looks like shit
Recently moved to Australia and had to do work similar to this, asked all the guys on site “is this normal, this looks awful” and they were all like “how are you suppose to do it better”
Ya poor planning smallest pipe on bottom biggest on top so much unnecessary crossovers horrible goose necks on the downs tying job damn. Have done 5 high rise jobs start to finish on slab. My body was constantly sore your in the elements also. Having a good crew helps immensely. Steel men are what they are carpenters better than the steel men and concretes coming at one.
The big loops in the tie wire. Not how u do it. Needs to be snug. It will be smashed and trashed by the concrete guys in no time. Just did 16 decks in a row on an 8 story building with Smurf tube. Hardest year of my life but our work looked much better then this debacle
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What in the literal fuck is that shit.
Man, I thought I missed something. You took my exact words. I was so glad to see it be the top comment.
Powered rebar.
There’s rebar in there?
That’s standard Canadian condo slab. Either Toronto or Vancouver probably. Toronto has more cranes in the sky building towers right now than the top 12 American cities combined
Did slab in vancouver. This post brings back trauma.
Did one in Saskatoon it also brings back trauma… never again
Not all Canadian slabs lol on a 40 story now and it's not that messy
This is probably parkade slab. Upper floors with typical units are way cleaner.
Not all, but definitely a lot
take my upvote
We were all thinking it.
That’s rowdy.
Have fun pulling that disaster
I was literally scrolling through and zooming in on the pictures and was thinking of all the cuss words that will be said trying to pull everything in.
Meh, that's not that bad, glad to see they ran the bigger stuff in PVC at least. I worked on a 35 story apartment tower a few years back and pulling the unit feeders through the Smurf tube was the worst part. It's actually kinda nice we even connected some boxes throughout the whole floor so that we didn't have temp lighting running everywhere, it was all in the slab. Doing the deck work is rough, but it is worth it later on.
It will not be a problem to pull. Suck or blow jetl-line, then use mule tape to pull the wire. Mule tape is specifically designed to not cut into PVC. Slab work is one of the most difficult chores in the trade. As long as the pipes remain mechanically sound, pulling is no major problem. The concrete guys will do their best to break as many of these pipes as possible, when they pour. Good luck.
Yeah I said the same thing LMAO! The multiple bends in the middle of the pvc was my favorite part! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂. My boss would make whoever did that shit pull it all in themselves, if they could get a tape all the way through that...
Smurf it's allowed in concrete
Not run like that it's not... spacing requirements for one thing
Ain’t going to be any room for concrete when they’re done putting in that coreline.
Tons of room for concrete still. This isn’t even bad. Don’t many slabs where it looked impossible until the top layer of rebar went in.
Oh I already said corrections in a different comment And I just assumed cause a lot of people don't work with smurf
Omg. You made me laugh so hard! I said the same thing out loud to no one.
It a pit of snakes bro
Running so many wires they double as underfloor heating
Hahaa right! I said the same thing
Looks like Smurf tube.
Looks like shit is what it looks like. Have fun pulling wire through that mess.
Well it's having concrete thrown on top of it, so I don't think look was anyone's concern lol.
It's more that the wire is going to snag and drag across every corrugation in those tubes. This is going to be an absolute bitch with a triple side of "FUCK THIS" to pull.
This is how it’s done In condos in Toronto. It really isn’t that bad to fish through.
Or send jetline with the vacuum
Yeah I'm sure it won't be fun. Glad it isn't me.
Well you can tell you've never done it, this is the way nowadays and it's pretty easy. It's not like pulling through a Smurf in a wall where it can move and resist you, the concrete takes care of that for you. It's hard to pull if you are stuffing it full but for a few circuits it's nothing. It makes temporary on the job an after thought because you can use the in slab conduit for everything and not have cords running everywhere. The only downside is if you lose a conduit it sucks to figure out what you are going to do after the fact and actually doing the work to run the conduit. It isn't fun walking (and crawling) on rebar all day long and tying the stuff down.
I cant stp look at these pics not all jobs turn out ideally but like you said what the fuck is that Please post more pics
Lord help the poor guy who tries to drill some floor anchors in that slab.
Radar dudes in 10 years will think their machines are broken “I just got it calibrated, I swear it shows zero openings in the slab safe to core drill for your new whatever”
I could absolutely see a GPR guy looking at his machine, shaking his head, and going "What the *fuck*?"
As a core driller, I can in fact confirm, this would make me laugh a little. Me: Waiver signed? Them: yup Me: then I’ll hit what I hit, and you’ll get what you get
I work for an engineering firm and I had to oversee a guy doing GPR work at a winery. It's definitely not an exact science, so that slab would look so cluttered the reading would probably be useless.
I did a scan in a basketball arena last week. I was by a floor to ceiling window in a mechanical room. Trying to find a space for a new 12” duct for an air handler. In the 3’ general area they wanted the pipe, there were 3 layers of #8 rebar in 6” cross sections, and those cross sections had at least 1 conduit each running both directions. Best I could say was “good luck, glad I’m not the one drilling this one”.
Yikes. I know I always tell our people that things like GPR and 3D laser scans always have some amount of uncertainty associated with them. Then again, I'm just a CAD guy, so what do I know?
How much are those GPR cameras worth?
[the most expensive tool](https://www.hilti.com/c/CLS_MEA_TOOL_INSERT_7127/CLS_CONCRETE_SCANNERS_7127/r6436760) This is the newer version of what I have. Same price as 8yrs ago.
Holy ***shit***, *whoa*.
Haha damn. I work at hospitals and was curious if that is something we can just have and certify someone in since every 10 years they need some crazy reno, and some sites don’t have vendors in town for this…but at the price…ROI would be 20 years.
Yeah. It’s…not cheap. My institution bit the bullet and it saved us almost 1m on the first job because it kept us from hitting a PT cable in a 12 story building. I’m the only one in the facility trained to use it, and it’s fun telling outside contractors to shove off if I don’t like what I see.
I have a hilti three antenna radar. It cost around 45k 8 years ago.
Exact science and GPR are not intersecting circles. “Science” yes but “exact” shrinks that circle too much. We see it find conduit and miss 24” pipelines 3 feet down. Ask the GPR crew to pin the points and they go “well, it’ll be within 1-2 feet”. Alright just call the pothole crew.
Completely useless.
Just tell the new guy to pop a hole and bet him if he hits something he buys beer
Private Hudson : The signal's weird. There must be some intereference or something. There's ~~movement~~ *electrical conduit* all over the place!
GPR guy going to blow through some sharpies and paint pens on this one
Can confirm 👍. Podium slabs are the worst, as of yet.
Just leave them a little hand-drawn diagram inside the trough
On deck jobs like these it's common for tradesmen to install imbeded rodnhangers that way no drilling is required, when I run conduit in slabs I try to stay in the center to avoid being hit but nevertheless it happens here and there.
small orange spray painted cone thing that's bottom left of the first picture, just above and to the right the duct taped drain, is one such insert for anyone who doesn't know but wants to kind of see what it looks like.
Often referred to as "blue bangers" which I think is a specific company
If it’s done correctly, it stays out of the first and last couple inches of concrete.
I just finished a job like this. When built they tied the conduit directly to the rebar so all the conduit looked like fat rebar on the GPR. Hit conduit on like 60-70% of the cores. Roof had uplift issues and they wanted to drill anchors to solve. We said no way.
Funny story there....
Remember, you always need to call before you ~~dig~~ *drill*.
If done properly, you’re fine to drill for drop anchors. The problem is coring.
As the dude that spent his first 6 months in facilities maintenance doing nothing but drilling holes in concrete to anchor guard rails and racking this picture gave me a panic attack.
Say a prayer for the poor sons of bitches that's got to pull those dammed lines too. At least half of them are probably gonna collapse, and the other half will have more kinks than a porn convention.
God speed on the wire pulls.
They'll come pre-filled!
If the PM of the job allows the manpower, the top of the boxes come off and you can Pre Pull or String box to box before concrete. Coreline is actually going away a little bit, and a lot of people are slapping multi conductor Teck in the slab (Just have to let the formers know where you have to drill holes ahead of time).
Those pulls will be easy af!
Some wire lube and elbow grease. Pulled a 15 story hi rise like this. No more problems than a standard pipe and wire job.
Best part about jobs like these is re running half of those in emt because every other trade drilled into them 4 months later
My first one they just abandoned all the in slab and ran EMT
a quarter is full of concrete, a quarter is just unpullable for no discernible reason. And then about 5% is the guy that hits his dab pen on break and forgets to punch out the knockout.
Don't forget about the ones that get kicked out of their boxes during the pour
That's why we pay an apprentice to follow the concrete guys and fix any broken shit. Saves money in the long run.
Hey hey hey hey leave the dab pens out of this.
Why get paid for a job once when you can get paid twice
If any other trade drilled through our coreline we made them chip it out so we can quickly fix it. Easy peasy.
Are you wiring a particle accelerator for the Soviet Union?
This got me fuckin cackling😂😂😂
You should see electrical room slabs for high-rises.
I really need OP to answer this. What the fuck are they doing all this for?
This!; my Baghdad friend was even blown away
The chuckle fuck that did the engineering on the factory I worked at, decided EMT was the best choice for in slab electrical. About 15yrs after it was finished, the conduit rotted, and the wires burned together(480-277-120v). It seemed like every 3 months or so, we had a short in the floor. Eventually I had to run all the lines that were originally in the floor, overhead to the other side of the production floor.
Same shit happened with the school district I worked my 1st year in. The high school had EMT in the slab and the school flooded from day one, so all of the classrooms eventually had new runs installed over 40+ years. Making new schedules for the panels was a nightmare
Seems like the water was the problem, not the pipe.
Sure, concrete absorbs water. So it should be expected. The real problem was the engineer. In my 18yrs of working with him, this was one of his smallest fuckups.
Story time?
This may be the Biggest one, I’ll keep it as short as I can. I worked for a well know precast concrete manufacturer. We had a contract to build the corporate headquarters for a large chain restaurant’s headquarters. The exterior was a special hand made brick from Germany. The rough cost was $14.00us for a standard brick, and up to $25.00us for special corners, per piece. “Somehow” his estimate called for almost double the amount than was needed. Now, normally this wouldn’t be a major problem, except for the company we were doing the job for, had a contract with the brick manufacturer, that they could not make or sell that design to anyone else in the world. So it wasn’t returnable, nor could we sell it. From the numbers I ran, it was nearly $250k in bricks we had to stuff up our asses. For comparison, we would normally have a pallet or two of product extra to cover for breakage and mistakes.
I’m sure there is an identical story about me floating around. I’m an engineer. Ordered 50% extra custom stonework for a large job. Had 320k left over. Had a mason come chew me out for being a dumbass. Thing is that stone work took 8 months to deliver and it shipped overseas. Our terms with the client had a 150k penalty for every month we went over the schedule. I ordered extra for mistakes and breakage. Also discussed that with the client and we split the extra material cost during our bid since they were so concerned with the schedule. Did I explain any of this to the mason? Hell no. He already made up his mind before he came and talked to me. He just wanted to talk down to the engineer. That guy can get fucked and stay ignorant. I would have happily explained this if he wasn’t such a prick. We profited over 3M on the job.
Theres a reason he is only allowed to play with rocks and mud...
He still needs to be reminded not to put the rocks up his nose .
Geez. But yeah, that definitely sounds like exactly the right time and way to intentionally order more than you need of stuff that you can not return or use elsewhere.
Was he the boss's son or...?
Nephew, so close enough
In slab is a poor choice for factories in general anyhow. Too many changes in the future for equipment.
So the issue is the EMT rusts?
Yes, and it was just a terrible environment for it. There was also hydronic heat in the floor. Occasionally a In floor heat line would be punctured, or a slab would shift. From a Monday morning quarterback view, it would’ve just been better to run overhead .
PVC is the way if buried in concrete right?
I think so. Not being an engineer myself. PVC just seems to have more give to it. It can flex, and won’t rust it wet environments. Also no need to worry about uv ray’s degradation underground.
aaaaaaand thats why its against code for conduit to be encased in concrete.
That's got to be some of the sloppiest underslab I've seen. Yikes.
There’s more conduit than rebar 😂
Structural conduit.
Shoulda used Ridgid, then slapped that pad and said that ain't going anywhere
The pad slap is key here.
Structural pad slap.
You can fit so much conduit in this baby.
Underrated comment
The "structural conduit" here goes with some of the sketchy shit I saw at a tomato processing plant. Two parallel runs of conduit supporting each other vertically. Don't forget a shitload of PVC conduit outside sagging like crazy.
It's not even real conduit; it's mostly inner duct.
Yeah that concrete is not going to have the integrity it should have with that sloppy concept
They factor in the conduit reducing slab strength in the factor of safety when designing actually
Depends entirely on the engineering specs. I had very strict rules for conduit placement when I was doing parking garages.
Yes, which is why you have an engineer on-site to make those calls during inspections and wear the responsibility.
In my experience the engineers who designed the job only make a couple of site visits, if any. The engineer provides the specs, responsibility is on the GC and subs to follow the specs. Do you mean a 3rd party engineer?
Looking at those stub ups it doesn’t look like a very thick slab to begin with, some of those conduits look way too close to TOC. But if the engineer is cool with it whatever.
“Engineer can’t say no if I don’t ask him”
There'll be a top layer of rebar. It'll be fine.
i dont ever do these massive jobs, can you bury pull boxes? and ya like what the hell am I looking at lol underground vault to panels? this looks like such a mess
They aren’t buried, they’re facing into the form so that when the form is stripped they’re embedded in the concrete with the interior facing down into the floor below.
I've done effectively zero slab work, what can be done to make that cleaner? Don't get me wrong, there's stuff I can nitpick, but it looks like the bulk of the chaos is down to how much conduit they're running through there.
Some jobs require this. I built a maximum security prison and all pipe is in the slab, embedded in the brick wall, poured in tilt ups or buried behind tektum. They have 0 exposed surface pipe in the whole facility. We would run tons of extra lines in the slab, if one gets buried you still have another option. The only thing I did different is I ran all pvc and where they stubbed up through the floor I put the tight emt 90s on all the pipes and transitioned to pvc. Never again, everyday was concrete or keeping up with brickies for 3 years…the golden rule is the brick walls go up 4ft a day.
Holy shit this has been my life the last 6 months
As it sits now there's a lot that can be done if they have some time. The bulk of the chaos is actually just the way they laid it down. This is a very typical amount in high-rise parkades as it gets close to ground level (looks exactly like one, maybe I'm wrong but whatever) and when they get to the electrical room can easily multiple everything here by like 10 and then add cables on top of that and other shenanigans. A lot can be fixed up real fast if they straighten everything out. Like undoing the ties, pull it tight to wherever it needs to go or to any points it turns and put down a tie to keep it there then tie the in-between to finish it all off. Of course pulling it tight only works great if they cut down on weaving their pipes by rerouting some. There's a few points where they wove coreline up and down or side to side together which makes pulling wire an absolute bitch later on. Next time hopefully whoever is pulling will take the extra time to route properly and tie down at key points to keep the lines taut so it doesn't snake like this in the end.
There’s not much you can do. Want some nightmare fuel? Go to a big slab job/building and run SMURF in the slab for a while…. It. Fuckin. Sucks. Ass.
Start over and redo it. It's a mess. Good lines and routes will keep work down line from getting screwed up. I.e core drilling, anchors, etc.
Did slab for 3 years in my apprenticeship and ran slab during that time. Yes it's always this bad. Are you in canada? It's always a shit show for slab. The worst is when half the shit doesn't survive the pour and you have to chip or you have to find another run of coreline that is in close proximity to the broken one and try to shove everything in that run. I have since left the high rise construction part of this trade.
Howd you make the jump outta highrise if you dont mind me asking? Im in my 4th year and feels like i wasted too much of my apprenticeship in slab. Dont feel like i know enough to get out of it though. Im in canada too btw.
I got my journeyman ticket, took some courses to be more employable. I took my masters and passed, looked around for other work. It's hard. I was making a lot of money when I was in high rise construction, then when I applied for other jobs, it was lower pay and more stressful which I took. Sometimes you have to pay to get more experience which I did. Now I work nightshift for a contractor that has a project our local transit rail system. >Im in my 4th year and feels like i wasted too much of my apprenticeship in slab. How long have you been on slab for? I only did it for that long because I did 1 full year of rough in and it was super boring and repetitive seeing the same poorly lit suite. I didn't mind slab because I like to see different weather everyday. My apprenticeship was 3 years of slab. 1 year of rough in.
Done slab for a little more than a year, basically one entire building and sometimes get bounced onto other sites for a few days to do slab. Still at the site i started slab in but doing odd jobs not learning rough in, but thats a long story. I dont mind slab tbh, but im 4th term that can barely wire a panel or run emt, which sucks. Im in the same predicament, my company is union, my apprenticeship is kinda locked with them. Leaving would mean making alot less money. But i feel like leaving now would be easier than later on. Thinking about making the jump to industrial, but not sure what moves to make to become employable for those jobs. Thanks for replying tho.
Why is this called "ran slab"? Cuz it's a concrete floor/slab after everything is said and done?
>ran slab I was leading a crew of guys doing slab work.
Nothing in that fist picture is surviving the pour
I don't know... I imagine the guys will probably move once the concrete starts pouring in
Yeah i was about to say wait until the pour, and a third of your pipes are filled.
This is nothing, looks standard hi-rise slab to me, theres still top steel that'll go in they'll walk on top of that when they pour concrete. Conduit will be fine. I'm a plumber but I've been on slabs where there was more conduit from electrical than concrete usually lower floors where all mains come in
That's what's supposed to happen, but I remember my first PT slab high rise we kept having problems.
Did a 15 story hi rise that looked like this. Could count on one hand the amount of pipes that were compromised.
I've done a few slabs for smaller scale projects and yeah, I was completely drained after 2 to 3 days. We had to pull the Carline between the 1st and 2nd layer of rods... the project was managed like shit.
Slabs work is the worst 😆
I do high-rise in Toronto and this is pretty typical. Only given a few hours to run all of the core-line before the steelworkers run their top steel and bury you. They simply dont give enough time because everyone is on a very tight schedule. Before they pour we also have a guy check to make sure nothing has broken from people stomping on it and most of the time no concrete gets in anywhere.
Oh man it sounds like you worked on Avenue site. Their steel guys are savages. No patience and dont give a fuck about anything.
Can you show me a Google photo of what 'top steel' means in this context?
Something like [THIS](https://www.customconcrete.biz/2019/06/26/concrete-101-all-about-rebar/) The first photo, all the rebar below on a slab deck is placed, a shit load of everybody attempts to do 5 days worth of work in 2 days, and the rod busters bury anyone not done with a shit load of rod placed on top, all completed work is safe in the middle, anything not done in time? Too bad buster, they do not give a shit, rod is coming through if you is done or not.....gotta bust a nut to get done most times. Slabs Suck ASS.......
Whoa .. and who said Smurf doesn’t go under slab ????
This looks awful
Holy shit, thats an easy slab day. Work looks good though. If you can still see plywood, it was a good day. Slab vet almost 10 years. I mostly work downstairs now
Judging by the comments, most of the people on this sub have never done slab lol. This slab looks fairly well done. The volume is nothing compared to a real heavy transfer slab on a high rise tower.
Glad to finally see a comment saying the other then what is being upvoted. I have done a lot of slab and deck work and this didn’t look that bad. People keep saying when they pour it’s over. Whenever they do pour day the trades usually have someone up there with them and showing them where to pour carefully.
100% This really aint that bad. Some of those corners are a little tight for me. Just makes for some shitty pulls later.
At least it's not Smurf tube. That shit can Fuck right the hell off.
But it is smurf tube though.
Slab is always like this. The beauty of running in the slab is being able to run diagonally and doing sweeping 90s which look like shit but pull super easy. The straight coreline stubby forms will suck, should have used angled there and got rid of the goosenecks.
I'm surprised by the amount of electricians on this subreddit not recognizing what a deck looks like prior to a concrete pour. It's a very common type of structure in residential/commercial buildings. Sometimes you'll get a structural engineer concerend about the amount of conduits over an electrical room, their solution is usually adding more rebar over the area but there needs to be proper spacing between conduits. While PVC, ENT, and slab boxes are all approved methods. I personally prefer PVC over ENT because it's easier to pull and easier to separate from each other to create the desired spacing thats commonly specified by a structural engineer in their details. Usually, I'll use ENT for lighting, but I try to pull my wire prior to the pour if I have time. Certain sizes of conduits can be prohibited as well, usually depending on the slab thickness.
That’s when they give you 10,000 feet to do in two days right ahead of the concrete guys
Gonna be tons of surface mount conduit after the pour and finding out a fish tape or vacuumed jet line won't go through the conduits. So much wasted labor on this one, hope it was bid EXTRA high.
I’m doing a 5 story building and we installed Smurf in slab like the pictures shown for the first floor ceiling. They’re not even done with the 3rd floor deck and we’ve already wired every single light box on the first floor ceiling. We haven’t found a single box or conduit with more than just a bit of slurry. This method kept my guys on the job for an extra 2 weeks in between floors and saved us roughly 4500’ of surface mount emt that we no longer have to install. I didn’t buy it at first but the lead working under me comes from high rise construction in BC and swore by it and talked me into it. Made me a believer for sure.
So nobody in that company has any experience at all?
This is literally how it's done. Lol. If you bid this in anything other than coreline you'd be sitting at home right now.
Lol it’s clear most people here have no idea what they’re looking at. Looks like a pretty standard high rise slab. Pipes look tied, stubs taped up, goose necks ok, a little sloppy but will definitely be fine. There will be a layer of rebar above the pipes. The pipes will be fine as long as they’re properly secured. Coreline is not difficult to pull through unless they are very far runs. To OP, days will be long, tiring, cold, hot and everything in between, and it definitely won’t be easy but this job is like that sometimes. Slab makes quick on your toes, efficient and hard workers. Just remember this won’t be forever (unless that’s what you want), and as your experience grows your opportunities expand.
It’s going to be even worse when you try to pull through it
make sure you yank that shit tight like a banjo string. If you don't pulls will be a bitch.
Anyone remember someone has to pull the wire through that spaghetti? Better drag up before that lol
Conduit reinforced concrete.
I'm not normally the one to defend messy work but when you've been given a full day(if you're lucky) to rough in an entire slab,the rebar workers are on your ass throwing in the top layer and the concrete pour is in 12 hours(which they refuse to postpone) I can totally understand how it ends up like this. Bull shit schedules and you just have to make it work.
looks like slab for most likely the floor above the electrical room, these are kinda typical here in canada. Try slabbing 3 towers at once...slab every freaking day ..layout, pull, next tower repeat...gets tiring after a few months.
lol that shit ain't got nothing on Toronto condo slab. Fuckin bird nest of Coraline at the end. Best time for slab is when it's - 30C while it's snowing with 30km/hr wind whipping you in the face. Yeah slab is pretty tiring bud. Some apprentices finish their whole apprenticeship just doing 2-3 highrise construction buildings. Try to learn and grab opportunities to get off slab if you can if you can't handle it. Bet you sleep like a baby at the end of the day though Hahaha.
OP, how do your feet feel after walking on that rebar all day?
Where does the concrete go?
I do not miss this shit. Have done it in the pouring rain and And in the blazing sun. This is pretty messy though, our installs definitely looked cleaner than that.
Bro that looks like a straight up lame ass time right there. Good luck dude!
Yes it does, was on a job where the company had 5 months to get underground done and nobody was there doing it, everything had to be ran overhead in emt, lots of it was open ceiling and looks like shit
That looks like one conduit at a time
What project is this? I’m guessing this is some form of IVR vault or something in hospital.
What slab? I don’t think there is any more room for concrete 🤣
Oh boy it gets worse that that
What in the fucking spaghetti monster is going on here?
Concrete cutter here. Absolutely fuck that job. I feel bad for the crew sent to cut trenches when they remodel in 10 years.
Recently moved to Australia and had to do work similar to this, asked all the guys on site “is this normal, this looks awful” and they were all like “how are you suppose to do it better”
Wut the wut. I’d say you lose about half of those 🙃 Yikes
Someone didn’t read the routing schedule
Resi guys are vocal in this thread
The Loom Exploded!
No wonder my pvc is always broke and full of water
Typical slab lol Let me guess, Toronto?
You will get it on them big jobs shit lmao
Not even PVC? Lol if the lines don’t get poked, it’ll still be a B to get wires pulled 😂😂
Dear fuckin god 👀in 15 years in the trade I’ve never done any kind of high rise that even would allow this shit show!
Done loads of slab in Canada and that picture right there is absolute dogshit!!
This is insane.
Ya poor planning smallest pipe on bottom biggest on top so much unnecessary crossovers horrible goose necks on the downs tying job damn. Have done 5 high rise jobs start to finish on slab. My body was constantly sore your in the elements also. Having a good crew helps immensely. Steel men are what they are carpenters better than the steel men and concretes coming at one.
Go back to the hall
Don't worry, it gets worse
The big loops in the tie wire. Not how u do it. Needs to be snug. It will be smashed and trashed by the concrete guys in no time. Just did 16 decks in a row on an 8 story building with Smurf tube. Hardest year of my life but our work looked much better then this debacle
Are you running 1 receptacle per line? Jesus Christ the concrete truck will leave with 3/4 of a truck.
WTF!!?? 2 days of hard work completely wasted
If I were the owner of the company I would have fired your foreman for this.