Curt Bellamy, author of Phoenix Fence Guide
I spent eleven years on block wall crews in the East Valley. The first several were on the wall itself, mixing, laying, setting steel, learning what a footing does when the soil under it changes its mind in August. The rest were spent writing the bids, which is a different education entirely. You learn quickly that most customers cannot read the document they are about to sign, and that the industry has very little incentive to teach them.
I left because of a specific afternoon. A woman in Gilbert showed me two quotes for the same wall that differed by about forty percent, and asked me which one was the good one. Neither of them stated a footing dimension or a rebar spacing. I could not tell her, and neither could anyone else, because the information that would have answered her question was not written down anywhere. That is the gap this site exists to close.
What I am useful for is the assembly. I can tell you the order a bid is built in, which lines get padded and how, what caliche does to a trench and therefore to a number, and which specification a contractor will happily give you if asked and will happily omit if not.
What I am not is an inspector, an engineer or an attorney. Where a page states a code section or a height threshold, Alma Reyes reviews it, because being confident about a code you last read three years ago is how bad information gets published.
I do not build walls anymore, I do not take work, and I do not accept money from anyone who does. If a page here ever reads like it is steering you toward a purchase, I have failed at the only thing this site is for. Write to me at [email protected] and tell me so.
Pages on this site that cite a code section, a height threshold or a safety standard are reviewed by Alma Reyes, ICC-certified residential building inspector.