My best day on the trowel then my worst week right after

Last Tuesday I laid 450 bricks on a retaining wall job near Austin and everything just clicked. The mortar mix was perfect, the sun was out, and I finished three hours early. Then the next morning I show up and the slab had shifted an inch overnight because the ground was wet from a hidden sprinkler leak. Took me all week to grind out and redo 200 of those bricks. Has anyone else had a perfect day turn into a nightmare like that?

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betty_scott182mo ago

That sprinkler leak shifting the whole slab is wild... I mean, an inch overnight? That's not a small crack, that's the ground actually moving under you. I've seen mud settle before but never enough to throw a whole pour off like that. Grinding out 200 bricks by hand is brutal, my back hurts just thinking about it.

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jordan6532mo ago

Jeez, that inch overnight is the part that gets me too! Did the water actually pool up under there for a while, or did it really just shift that fast from one night of leaking? I'm trying to picture the timeline, like did you wake up and notice the door sticking, or was it just when you stepped on the brick and felt it slope? And with 200 bricks, are you using a grinder with a diamond wheel, or did you try one of those chipping hammers first? I don't know which sludge is worse, honestly.

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