Why do different councils require different concrete strengths?
Excerpt from 3AW Radio Interview
Ron: I used to work in Sydney and you’d go to one council and they’d say okay the cross over – 4 inches, okay. Next council, cross over – 4 inches, with steel. Next council – 5 inches of concrete, steel and chairs.
Phil (Nupave): Ron, it’s exactly the same here in Victoria.
Ron: Why do they do that?
Phil (Nupave): Well different regulations, some of the streets in some of the newer areas are narrower and therefore heavy vehicles coming in wanting to turn around they’ll drive on the cross over. Of course if you’ve got a 10 tonne truck going over concrete at 4 inches thick with no steel in it, it’s going to give. So, and it’ll depend often on the soil classifications, often they don’t want steel mesh in there because they want to get to services if they need to replace underground services. So they’ll just cut through the concrete, but usually then they’ll want a thicker base of concrete. So, yeah there’s a whole lot of ranges of reasons why they have the various things, and it is frustrating, it would be wonderful to have a standard form.