Just realized I was wasting hours on the wrong bull float technique

Been finishing concrete for about 8 years now. Always used a long sweeping motion with my bull float, pulling it toward me the whole time. Last month I was on a job near Austin and a 65 year old finisher walked over and watched me for 5 minutes. He said flat out, "you're just moving water around, not floating." Took me another 45 minutes just to fix a 30x30 slab I already messed up. He showed me to lift the float slightly on the pull and only push it forward. Cut my finishing time by almost half on the next pour. Bought him lunch at a BBQ spot after. Any of you guys still using the old pull-only method and not realizing it's slower?

3 comments

3 Comments

jennifer8331mo ago

That thing about lifting on the pull and pushing forward really hits home. It's crazy how we get stuck doing something one way just because it "feels right" even when it's not working. I see this all the time with people at the grocery store trying to load their carts. They grab a bag from the bottom and yank it up, then spend ten minutes trying to jam everything back in. Lifting from the sides and sliding it forward is basically the same principle you just learned with the float. Small tweaks save so much time.

wade8711mo ago

Grabbing from the sides stops the bag from twisting on you. Works every time.

wilson.joseph1mo ago

Man I dont know if it's really that deep lol. Like yeah sure you can lift a bag from the sides instead of the bottom but I've been grabbing bags from the bottom for 30 years and never had to spend ten minutes jamming stuff back in. Maybe if you're buying 50 bags of chips and cant figure out how to stack them, but for normal people it's just a bag of groceries. And comparing it to learning a concrete float technique feels like a stretch to me. I get that small adjustments matter in some jobs but for lugging a 5lb bag of apples to your car I think we're overthinking this.