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Date: | Sat, 26 May 2007 10:56:27 -0100 |
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I will remember to use the terminology that I pour cement as I don't
really want anyone to mistake me for a concrete guy.
Often in NYC on the sidewalks the expansion joint material, which comes
presized in height, is capped with an inverted light-gray plastic
channel that is meant to be able to be pulled out later for the
installation of a sealant. This could be described as tubular. Though
concrete & sealants are different materials and technologies -- and
therefore it is likely different mechanics or in some cases even
different subcontractors would be involved. Quite often I see where the
gray channel is not removed. My thought being that the concrete sub did
his work and the sealant person never showed. Due to traffic more on the
spiked heel level you can sometimes see where the tops of the channels
is punctured.
In NYC there are contracts that the concrete folks bid on w/ the city to
replace sidewalks. It is a low bid. When a property owner has a
violation on their sidewalk they can opt to replace it themselves or to
have the city engaged contractor do it. There are crews who do nothing
but sidewalks over and over. A reason an owner would want to do it
themselves would be like for an Alexander Calder sidewalk or for a fancy
one like in front of the Ritz Carlton.
A seminal topic in NYC is replacement of bluestone sidewalks. There are
the relatively small bluestone sidewalks in the brownstone sections of
Brooklyn, then there are the occasional massive bluestone sidewalks in
Manhattan. A few months ago I was asked to look at a sidewalk in
Manhattan that had like 12' x 12' slabs of bluestone. This project sorta
fell through the cracks for me as it is a hassle to custom order and
deliver stone of that dimension and as a one-off endeavor our cost would
be highly prohibitive... not hardly worth the time for us to figure it
out. Need for boom truck, extensive permits, negotiation with quarrier
where my experience is that they don't want particularly to hear about
this sort hassle unless there is a lot of $$ involved. The client
mentioned that their neighbor, NYU, had done over their sidewalk a few
years before. If it is a large project it is inevitable that it would be
done with union workforce (setters, laborers & derrikmen) incorporated
into a larger budget... but to do 2 stones, and include in them cutouts
for utilities, is not anything done out of a pu truck. The bluestone
that quarries fabricate these days is not the same as it used to be in
the old days. A lot of the smaller sidewalks end up replaced with black
tinted concrete. Though bluestone sidewalks are neat they have their
problems. They can be slippery in the rain, they move around with ground
freeze-thaw, they delaminate, and tree roots like to push them around. I
can imagine at one time someone sold them as superior to brick in a
manner kin to sales of vinyl siding these days.
][<en
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