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Rant: the guy at my supply house said fiber mesh makes rebar optional on driveways
I was standing at the counter at a supply yard in Fort Worth getting a pallet of 3/8 rebar when a guy next to me told the kid behind the register that fiber mesh means you can skip the grid on a driveway. I told him I have torn out 6 driveways in the past 2 years where the fiber did nothing to stop the cracking, and 4 of them had no rebar at all. Fiber helps with plastic shrinkage, it does not carry load across a soft spot or a bad subbase, and no bag of fibers replaces steel sitting on chairs. If the mix is wet and the base is garbage, you will get cracks no matter how much fiber is in it. Anyone else get tired of hearing this one at the counter?
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noahbaker17d ago
My buddy Rick poured a 24x30 driveway over in Saginaw last spring and the finisher talked him into fiber only, no grid, said it was "the new way." Come January he had a crack running the full width right where the culvert pipe crosses under it, and the slab had settled about a half inch on that side. Rick called the finisher back out and the guy shrugged and blamed the base, which was the same base he looked at and said was fine. Cost Rick $3,800 to tear out and repour with #3 bar on chairs at 18 inches each way. Fiber is fine for what it does but it is NOT steel, and that soft spot would have cracked with or without a bag of fibers in the mix.
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