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I picked the cheap plastic rebar caps over the steel ones on a 40 unit job in Reno and I have zero regrets
Everyone in my office pushed me to spec the steel caps because they look more pro on the submittal, but the math said 2,400 caps at three times the price just to protect guys who mostly work at waist height. I went with the plastic ones, caught a lot of grief for it, and then we stacked 11 pallets of them on site for the cost of 3 steel pallets. Six weeks in, no injuries, no bent steel caps jamming up the bar, and my super admitted the plastic ones went on faster with gloves. The leftover cash went to better edge protection on the deck, which is where people actually fall. Anyone else think the spec standard on caps is mostly about how it looks in a binder?
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ninah104d ago
The line about it being "mostly about how it looks in a binder" is where I have to push back a little. Cheap plastic caps are fine when the bar is vertical and nobody is stepping on it, but on a 40 unit job you have guys dragging hose, laying deck, swinging material, and plastic cracks or pops off and then you have bare bar sticking up with a sharp edge. Steel caps that get bent are a pain, sure, but a bent cap still covers the bar, and a cracked plastic one does not. The real problem is you are counting on guys working at waist height, and the one time someone falls on a bar is the time that math does not matter. I get that the leftover cash went to edge protection, and that is a good call, but comparing a $1 cap to a $300k injury is the kind of risk trade nobody wins when it goes bad.
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