Materials
Construction materials
Rebar, mesh, joints, bumper blocks, interlocking blocks and the building supplies that go around a pour, not just the pour itself. Order them next to the mix and they leave the yard together.
Chapter 01
Rebar, mesh and dowels
Steel goes into a slab two different ways, and knowing which one a job needs is most of the order. Rebar sits inside the pour, tying the concrete together against the tension the mix can't resist on its own. Wire mesh does a lighter version of the same job, spread through a thinner residential slab or a walkway rather than a heavy commercial pour.
Lap it wrong and the tie is only as strong as the weakest overlap, so one bar has to run past the next by a real length, not just touch it. That's not a detail your contractor should be guessing at on site, and it's not one we guess at when we cut it either.
The steel standing proud along the near edge of a fresh pour is a dowel, not something left uncovered by accident. It gets set before the concrete goes down so the next pour ties into this one instead of sitting beside it as two slabs that move independently. Skip it and a driveway or sidewalk that should read as one continuous surface starts stepping at every joint within a year or two.
Stacked precast concrete bumper and curb blocks on timber dunnage, chamfered edges and exposed aggregate visible, at the Triple C Concrete yard in Lubbock.
Expansion joints are not control joints
A control joint is cut into the slab itself after the pour, a shallow saw cut that weakens the concrete along a chosen line so the crack every slab eventually makes happens there instead of somewhere random. It's part of the same piece of concrete, just scored to fail on purpose.
An expansion joint is built in before any concrete goes down: a full-depth gap, usually filled with a compressible fiber strip, between two slabs or between a slab and anything fixed, a foundation wall, a column, a curb. Its job is to absorb the slab expanding and contracting with the temperature, not to control where it cracks.
Cut a control joint where an expansion joint belongs and the slab still has nowhere to go when a Lubbock summer heats it up, so it pushes against whatever is next to it until something gives. Fill an expansion gap with rigid material instead of the compressible strip and you've built a control joint by accident in the wrong place. The two do different jobs in different spots, and mixing them up is the most common materials mistake we see on a job we supply.
Chapter 03
Bumper blocks and interlocking cement blocks
A bumper block, sometimes called a wheel stop, sits at the head of a parking space and does one job: stop a car's tires before the bumper reaches whatever's past the curb, a wall, a fence, a walkway. We supply them precast and ready to set, for a new lot or to replace ones a plow or a delivery truck has already cracked.
Interlocking cement blocks stack and key into each other with no mortar, which is what makes them useful for more than one job. Stepped back, they build a retaining wall that holds a grade change without a footing dug as deep as poured concrete would need. Stood square, they wall off a bulk storage bay for sand or aggregate, or build a washdown bin for containing runoff, work we understand from running our own yard the same way.
Triple C Concrete has supplied rebar, blocks and building materials off this yard since 2014, HUB certified and a Better Business Bureau and Lubbock Chamber of Commerce member. Call the plant at (806) 745-1111.
Beyond the mix
Everything on this ticket besides the concrete
Five more line items come off the same yard. Ask for any of them next to your mix and they load on the same truck.
Rebar
Sized for the pour and sold alongside the mix, so the steel and the concrete leave on the same order.
Building supplies
The everyday product a job site runs out of first, kept in stock at the yard.
Expansion joints
The compressible strip that absorbs movement. Not the saw cut that controls where a slab cracks.
Bumper blocks
Precast wheel stops, ready to set at the head of a parking space.
Interlocking cement blocks
Stack and key together with no mortar, for walls, storage bays and washdown bins.
Order it on the same ticket
None of this needs its own phone call. Tell the plant the mix and the yardage for the pour, then add the rebar, the joints or the blocks the same job needs, and it all leaves the yard together instead of coming from three different suppliers on three different trucks.
Pouring the same job? See how the mix itself gets ordered on the ready-mix concrete page.
Tell the plant what the job needs
Call (806) 745-1111 for rebar, joints or blocks priced next to your mix, or send the details and Matt will call you back.