Steel pipe on top of new concrete

Stan in Oly, WA

Well-known Member
Yesterday I poured a concrete pad at the back door of the garage of a house I own. It runs uphill at a slight angle away from the door so that it can meet a sidewalk a few feet away without an offset of about an inch which would create a stumbling hazard. It is on the south side of the building, the direction all our rain comes from, so I view it as a large sheet to direct rainwater into the garage. To prevent this, I pressed a length of 1-1/2" galvanized steel pipe into the wet concrete to form a shallow (3/4" deep, M/L) channel to carry water away from the door. (The pad also slopes down slightly in that direction.)

By the time the concrete had set up enough for me to finish it last night, the pipe was stuck tightly enough that it would have taken a good whack to dislodge it. I couldn't decide whether the concrete was less likely to be damaged if I removed the pipe then, or waited until the concrete cured for a few days. Since it was a 50/50 choice to me, and one choice let me go home and the other might have involved staying to repair surface damage, I left the pipe where it was. The concrete will still be quite green this morning when I go there. Should I knock the pipe out now, or stick to my decision to let the concrete cure for a few more days before removing it?
 
Leave it where it is Stan,after a few days in the sun,some expansion and contraction it will likely come out easily with just a tap with a hammer
 
Thanks, Michael. That makes sense---plus, it's the answer I was hoping for. The one I didn't want to hear would have started with the words, "Now you've done it."

Stan
 
Stan, I hate to say this now but a 3/4" deep channel will not control very much runoff. Really needed a french drain there.
 
Chris;

In the words of the immoral Mick Jagger, "You can't always get what you want." The channel only has to handle the rain that falls on the 42" X 54" slab itself. Anyway, on the resale of this particular house, I'm already into negative numbers on the value of my time. Doing everything the best way possible stopped being the standard some time ago.

Stan
 
Might depend on how far you pushed it in. If your over center the concrete could be holding it and you might have to run a saw cut along side to get it back to the outer most part of the pipe.
 
You bring up an interesting point. If the pipe is really 1-1/2" as I stated, and I really pushed it 3/4" into the concrete, as I also stated, then it would be right at the point of being trapped in the concrete. It really is 1-1/2" pipe, but it's nowhere near being pushed into the concrete past the midway point, so my channel is going to be quite a bit shallower than 3/4". That's what comes from trying to estimate something which I couldn't see well instead of figuring it by the very simple arithmetic involved. Thanks.

Stan
 

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