I warned the apartment manager against not using rebar in the sidewalk construction

It’s always hard when you sign leases on apartments that get sold while your contract is still active.

  • You are six months into your annual lease and suddenly you are renting from a new company altogether, often one that is seeking to run the same business with lower operating costs to squeeze what little profit out they can in the short term.

Then they sell the apartments to a different company that tries to do the same exact thing. But since they simply honor the terms of your existing lease in the short term, it’s just a waiting game for them until your lease expires and you’re at the receiving end of an increasingly unfair negotiation process. They always want to increase the cost of rent while adding useless and unnecessary rolls in the proces. And when they need to make fixes, repairs, or upgrades to the buildings, units, or grounds, I just shake my head. They got the cheapest and most poorly-rated asphalt company in this whole town to reseal and resurface our parking lot. Despite several residents bringing this up with the property managers, they went forward with hiring this dubious company. Just like we expected, they did a terrible job and it’s already cracking again not 12 months later. Recently they decided to replace some of the cracked and broken sidewalks but they did it cheaply. I told them to use steel rebar in the concrete to give it more stability and prevent future dcracking. It doesn’t cost that much money to buy a coil of rebar tie wire and a handful of wire ties to get that part of the job done.

 

Ironworker wire

I have an artist friend who buys new rebar wire for crafting beautiful furniture

My friend Michelle has been an artist her entire life, but she hasn’t always stuck with the same medium.

  • While she prefers handcrafted visual art these days, she was a budding young musician and poet in college.

She just happened to be brilliant at ceramics after sculpting with clay in her early childhood with her parents and siblings. I encouraged her to take a sculpting class in college because I assumed it would involve clay, but the instructor tried to approach every other possible medium through which one could make sculptures beyond the traditional ceramic clay that most people are already exposed to. First it was cardboard, which Michelle took to immediately to my utter bewilderment and surprise. She loved the idea of repurposing old cardboard that would otherwise end up in the landfill after foraging behind industrial buildings on the other end of town. However, it was metal sculpting that inspired Michelle more than anything else. The instructor had coils of highly flexible, galvanized steel rebar tie wire and wire ties to use for making things as trivial as coffee tables and as wild as abstract sculptures. One of our friends used the rebar bent into geometrical shapes that he would weld together, making these massive multi-sided forms that resembled dodecahedrons. Michelle used the skills to open a furniture crafting business using primarily rebar tie wire of various kinds and sizes, between 14 gauge and 18 gauge. Most of her furniture is made with stainless steel rebar tie wire because of its long term stability. She also uses galvanized steel rebar tie wire in addition to the stainless steel rebar tie wire.

 

16g galvanized double loop ties

My region is constantly hit with rain and thunderstorms year long

Before I moved into this area, I was used to having very little precipitation throughout the year.

In the winter the temperatures hovered in the high 30s and only snowed every now and then.

As far as rain was concerned, that was almost always confined to the late summer months, with perhaps a few thunderstorms here and there in the spring and autumn seasons as well. I miss those years because I was able to play outdoors with my friends for most of the summer without getting rained on and having to move our activities indoors like so many kids prefer these days. I actually enjoyed being outside playing street hockey and soccer with my friends on the weekends and during daylight hours when we got home from school. While I don’t have kids yet, I can’t imagine they would appreciate the sort of weather I experience nowadays if they were at all like me in wanting to be outside at that age. In my new environment we have precipitation all year long. Whenever it’s not cold enough for hail or snow, we have on and off rain throughout a good portion of the year. Anyone building with concrete has to take into account the additional moisture that it will be subjected to during its relatively short lifetime getting the same amount of precipitation that other climates experience in a decade by comparison. Concrete is porous and the steel rebar tie wire and the wire ties connecting the rebar tie wire together will inevitably corrode to some degree over long stretches of time. Using galvanized, zinc coated, or stainless steel rebar tie wire will definitely length the lifetime of the rebar tie wire being used and the concrete that it’s holding in place.

 

16 gauge stainless steel tie wire

I work at a contractor supply store and our supply chain issues are still present

My first job was at a fruit supplier company.

  • I was in the orange and citrus department and loaded massive barrels of fruit every single day at work.

It was an honest living, but I ended up hurting my back during a normal work procedure one afternoon and it put me in the hospital for a few weeks. This left me to wonder whether I really saw myself in the produce industry for the long term future. Not just that, but I wondered if I was really cut out for using my body daily to make a living. I had already demonstrated to myself and my employers that I wasn’t as physically capable of that manual labor as many of my coworkers. I decided to work in the administrative offices for a few years to get white collar job experience, and this led to me getting an even better job several years later at a contractor supply store. I not only work in the office, but I’m the supervisor in charge of all the inventory and stocking for this store and the other one we manage on the other side of town. Unfortunately, during the COVID-19 pandemic we faced a slew of supply chain issues like anyone else. There were two products though that not only went into temporary shortages, but also saw natural price increases—wood and metal rebar tie wire. The wood shortage affected the entire building industry, but the rebar supply chain problems were particularly tough for state, city, and county municipalities trying to complete large public projects on time like bridges and causeways. Rebar wire ties were scarce as well, particularly double loop ties and bar ties.

 

Zinc coated Double loop rebar ties

As a building inspector I’m looking for cracking concrete and exposed rebar wire

While I’m a building inspector these days, I started my path toward this industry as a health department inspector.

I was sent to restaurants and diners in my county to look for health code violations.

While many of the food service companies in this area really care about their products and their customers who eat those products, I saw some of the most terrifying things in my life during my years as a health department inspector. You’d think that my worst stories would involve rats or cockroaches, but it’s the sort of food that people will leave in a walk-in fridge for two weeks before attempting to serve to paying customers that grossed me out the most. I became really jaded with my job one year when I made a huge fuss about a restaurant that nearly killed someone from a food poisoning incident. But that’s not what threw me over the edge, it’s that it was one of dozens of cases happening after I made my initial inspection and filed the appropriate paperwork with the county to shut them down. When they stayed open after the media frenzy, I concluded that there must be decisions being made behind closed doors for less than ethical reasons, so I joined the building inspection department as soon as an opening appeared. Now I inspect cracked concrete and exposed rebar tie wire on old condominium buildings to determine the safety levels of the structure and make recommendations afterward. I have seen some structures made with either galvanized or stainless steel rebar tie wire last much longer than they should given the salty conditions they are exposed to in this environment.

Forming wire made in USA

We’re working in the summer heat with hectic building deadlines right now

I hate working in the hot summer sun with hectic deadlines being imposed on us from upper management.

  • Before I was given a chance to work in the building department, I was on the landscape crew and we would lay sod and plant flowers and shrubs in the yards of the new houses after the building crew finished their work.

We all prefer the winter labor because the temperatures are often in the 40s and 50s during the day when we’re busy at work on the homes we’re all building together. There was a major disruption in building contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic while supply chain shortages and backups forced some contractors to put a halt to previous schedules and deadlines. My state had some pretty heavy pandemic lockdowns and restrictions so I noticed the loss of work immediately when my paycheck suddenly dropped. Thankfully that’s no longer an issue now, but it’s almost worse now that I am under these insane deadlines in the middle of the summer with 90 degree temperatures at bare minimum each day. I am a steel rebar tie wire welder and I can say that my job becomes a living nightmare when I have to do it in weather with 100-plus heat indexes each day. On top of the heat from my welding equipment, the coils of rebar tie wire absorb radiant heat from the sun while they sit out before I’m able to get to them. That means the rebar is already hot before I even get to it with my welding equipment, making the job of installing the rebar wire ties even harder than normal.
rebar tie wire certified domestic

Why use different gauges of rebar wire for different projects?

I thought that I could simply build a loft in my high-ceiling living room with little to no help, but that was a mistaken assumption.

I was told that I could get in a lot of trouble by doing any structural modifications without the proper permits and inspections to insure that the work is being up to code.

That started a discussion with my best friend about what kind of wood I’d be permitted to use if I undertook such a project myself instead of hiring a separate company to do it instead. For instance, do I have to buy expensive two-by-six or two-by-twelve inch boards to make it structurally sound, or can I get away with cheaper two-by-four wooden boards. Those are engineering questions at the end of the day and I realize that I’m definitely not an engineer. It got me thinking about the engineering questions that go into designing and building a large bridge or an apartment building. For instance, the concrete being used for these structures is held together internally by metal rebar that is strategically placed in the right places to keep everything together. If any cracking forms, the rebar tie wire will prevent it from spreading or getting worse. The reason you see these concrete causeways last for decades in coastal areas is because of the type of rebar tie wire used. It’s not just a question about using stainless steel or black annealed rebar wire versus traditional steel because there’s a question of size. There are common sizes like 14 gauge, 16 gauge, and 18 gauge rebar wire coils that can be bought and used for any number of different applications.

16 gauge rebar wire ties

The deck of my new Tiki Bar has reinforced galvanized steel rebar inside

This type of rebar tie wire is resistant to long term corrosion from both salt and moisture

As a new bartender in my early 20s, I had no ambitions to own a business, let alone a beach bar. Back then I just wanted to make enough money to both pay my bills and always have fun with my friends on the weekends and in the hours when I was away from work. My work ethic wasn’t what it is today, that is for sure. I also drank a lot of alcohol both on the job and when I got home, making things even worse for my drive and determination. At one point a friend of mine accidentally died falling asleep on his porch during subzero temperatures one night when he came home from the bar so drunk that he couldn’t manage to unlock his front door. His neighbor saw him slouched down in a ball on his front porch with his keys on the doormat next to him. I was devastated by the news and started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings the next day. While I never completely quit drinking alcohol, I stopped drinking more than a few times a month and dropped the amount of liquor I was consuming by about 90%. After forming a healthier relationship with alcohol, I noticed my work ethic naturally increase. Now I’m proud to say I own a Tiki Bar right on the beach and I just paid to build a brand new concrete deck that is reinforced with galvanized steel rebar tie wire. This type of rebar tie wire is resistant to long term corrosion from both salt and moisture. Compared to non-zinc coated rebar tie wire, the galvanized 14 gauge steel rebar tie wire is supposed to last longer with the least amount of corrosion.

Bar wire made in USA