All the rebar should be tied, why don't you tell your builder what you want, before the forms are set, it's your house.

 

then what do they do ? have a guy hold the the stick holding the off-line rebar in place til the conc's able to do it ? by then he can't remove the stick,,, of course rebar should be tied - even when overlapped - 10x the bar's diameter w/3 wraps (#4 bar x 10 = 5" overlap),,, vertical bar is set into the footer 4' o/c + it also has a 6" bend on the end for addl stability,,, horizontal bar's tied to the verticals.

woody might also be thinking ' GROW A PAIR !' i certainly am

 

I can't speak for Maine, but it sounds peculiar to me as well. HERE, the verts are tied to the dowels that are cast into the footing. The horizontals are woven through or cradled to the form ties, and the verts usually get tied at least once to the horizontals near the top.

That said, as long s there's decent cover over the rebar, I highly doubt the foundation would see any failure from the rebar.......

 

Setting up rebar in poured concrete foundation

You guys are great! Anybody I ask up here won't reply till he knows who's doing my work. Then he says, "Oh, so-and-so? He's great!" I even went to a soil engineering company about the gravel that has been poured for under the slab floor -- it's rounded stones like from a river, 1/2" to 3" in size. The site work guy says "It won't compact, but that's ok." First, the soil engineer asked who was doing the site work; then he said, "He's my neighbor! Known him for years! He's great!" And he refused to even look at the sample of the gravel I had with me or tell me what should have been used. I'm afraid to put a slab on this stuff but would have to pay somebody to dig it all out -- 1,040 sf. (I am a 70 yr old female with a bad back so can't do much myself anymore.) And maybe it really is ok? But not compacted?

I write my own contracts from info available on the net, like on this site, and from the State. Yet if I leave out one detail, they won't do that piece of the work. I wrote "horizontal and vertical rebar in a 20" by 24" grid" because he put that in his quote, but I did not add "tied together at every intersection of the rebar" because I thought that was self-evident to an experienced guy, and ties were mentioned elsewhere, "Ties, chairs, ladders, etc., must be of metal", and we had discussed it already and he'd agreed to the ties. But they were not specifically mentioned in his quote, either. So he laughs behind his hand at me and doesn't do it.

Anyway -- if I have no wall all winter, does the footing have to be protected from the weather somehow? Will next Spring's concrete stick to it adequately to prevent water penetration into the basement?

It's killing my budget to have to let guys go for refusing to do proper work, then having to pay somebody else to do what they didn't -- I end up paying twice. The first time, I paid for what had been done but refused to pay for what he decided not to do (all in detail in the contract). The guy put a lien on my property and threatened a lawsuit. I had to pay a lawyer $1,000 just to do the paperwork to free me of those, which was simple because the contractor was clearly in the wrong. not me. But I won't ever have the house if my budget keeps being drained off like this.

Thank you!

 

Anyway -- if I have no wall all winter, does the footing have to be protected from the weather somehow? Will next Spring's concrete stick to it adequately to prevent water penetration into the basement?



Thank you!

Yes, the footing absolutely has to be protected rom frost heave. If not, you might as well plan on having them torn out as well. But, they'll need to be protected even if the walls are poured and bakfilled. At some point, you'll either need to get some heat in teh basment over winter, or you'll need to insulate all of the footings, post pads, strip footings, etc...

There's no reason to have concern with the walls "sticking" to the footing, thats' what the dowels are for. Ans, poured wall to concrete footing will not be waterproof by itself, it needs additional measures to ensure it's water tight........

 

I agree with jomama, that the foundation would see any failure due to the rebar, and just go ahead with the pour, sounds like your up against the local ole boys club.