How to read a concrete batch ticket on pour day

Learning how to read a concrete batch ticket takes about 90 seconds. Seven boxes on the slip describe your slab, and five matter most on pour day: the mix design and its design strength, the cement content, the additives, the batch and discharge times, and the water added at your site. That last box tells you if the slab you paid for is the slab you got.

Take a photo of the ticket before you hand it back. The driver doesn’t need the paper to leave, just a signature. So ask for your copy and keep it.

Which boxes on the ticket actually matter?

The batch ticket (some folks call it the delivery ticket) has a dozen or more boxes, because the plant tracks its own stock on the same paper. Its scales weigh out each load, and the ticket prints what they weighed. Most of that ticket data is bookkeeping. Seven boxes describe your slab, and they run in about this order down the page.

PSI means pounds per square inch, or how hard you can press on the concrete before it breaks. The PSI on the ticket is a 28-day number. It’s the strength the mix should reach 28 days after the pour, not on pour day.

So how long does it take concrete to set? Set is when the wet mix stiffens into solid concrete, and final set comes about two to four hours after the pour, depending on the heat. Hard enough to use takes longer. On a driveway, walking on it is usually fine at 48 hours. Cars can go on at 7 days at the soonest, and 14 days is better. Our page on concrete cure time vs dry time walks through both clocks.

Read the first two boxes before the chute swings. Read the last one before you sign. The rest can wait till you stack the tickets on the tailgate at lunch.

Why is the water-added box the one that matters?

Water is the only thing on that ticket a person can change after the load leaves the plant. And every gallon costs you something you can’t buy back.

Concrete shows up stiff. Stiff concrete is harder to move, harder to screed flat, and harder on the crew, so the pull to open the water valve is real, and it isn’t malice. But that water doesn’t bond with the Portland cement. It takes up room while the mix is wet and rises to the top as the slab sets. Then it dries out and leaves tiny holes all through the paste. You lose strength and density. The top turns soft and chalky, and it polishes washed out and blotchy instead of tight and even.

Watch for slump past 5 inches (slump is a simple measure of how loose the wet mix is). A mid-range plasticizer gives the crew the same easy pour without touching the water-to-cement balance, and it only adds a couple of dollars a yard. Against a slab that does less for good, that’s not a close call.

So take a photo of that box on every load. Nobody has to be cheating for it to matter. Three months from now the floor may be whitening under traffic, with everybody standing around it with an opinion. On that day, the gallons written on that line are the only fact in the room.

What do the batch time and discharge time tell you?

How long the concrete was mixing before it went into your forms. They’re also the only pair of numbers on the ticket the plant can’t change after the fact.

ASTM C94 is the standard for ready-mix concrete. It sets the default limit at 90 minutes from the moment water meets the cement, or 300 turns of the drum, whichever comes first. The buyer can stretch that when the mix has a retarder (an additive that slows the set) or when conditions call for it. On a hot day, the real working window is often shorter anyway. Both times print on the paper, so a load that sat in line at the plant, or waited an hour on your drive, shows up whether anybody mentions it or not.

If a load runs long, more water isn’t the fix. The fix is a talk with the driver about whether that load goes in at all. Have that talk in the first 10 minutes, not the last.

What do you do if a number on the ticket looks wrong?

Act before the chute swings, because after that the load is in your slab.

• The design strength is lower than your bid. You can turn that load around. It costs somebody money, so do it before any concrete leaves the truck.
• Gallons show on the water-added line. Ask why, and ask for a plasticizer in the next truck instead of more water.
• More than 90 minutes passed between batch and discharge. Don’t fix it with water. Decide with the driver whether that load gets placed, unless a retarder and a written OK stretched the limit.

How does a batch ticket decide what your floor can look like?

The finish nobody has picked yet is already half decided by the paper in your hand.

Polished concrete has no coating and no added color. The diamonds cut into the slab and show whatever the mix put there: cement paste and local stone, in the amounts the plant weighed out. Oklahoma’s native sands and fine aggregates run tan, so a standard 3,000 PSI home mix polishes to a light pecan tone. Add more cement and the top shifts toward gray, because a richer paste pulls the look away from the stone. Our polished concrete color page gives the full reason, and why stains and dyes act different from the concrete’s own tone.

3,500 PSI is the practical low end for a slab that’ll be polished or coated. Below that, the mix carries tiny holes the grinder can’t take out, because they run through the paste and down around the stone. Say the ticket in your hand reads 3,000, and someone in your family has been talking about a polished floor in the shop. You want to know that today, not at grind time. The mix design is one of four pour-day habits that control the whole chain: Set, Portland, Even, and Cure. All four are in the Pour-4-Polish SPEC framework.

Take four photographs and be done

It costs about two minutes of your own time, with no inspector and nobody from a concrete company standing on your pad.

1. The barrier, before any concrete. A wide shot of the plastic sheeting with the pipe holes cut, fitted, and taped. Then one close shot at a plumbing stub.
2. The reinforcement, in place. Take this one after the first truck has emptied into the far corner. That’s when chairs collapse, if they’re going to. Rebar lying on the bottom of a slab is just along for the ride, and it can’t hold anything.
3. Every ticket, front side. One per load, before you hand it back. Make sure the water-added line is easy to read.
4. The finished slab. Once the crew pulls off, before anything gets set on it.

Those four photos end most of the fights a slab can start over the next twenty years. They won’t stop a defect. Chairs still fail and weather still turns. But the question of what happened will have an answer.

For what goes wrong during a pour from the crew’s side, see the five crew mistakes that ruin a polished floor. And green-cut joint timing covers the one that runs out fastest after the trucks leave.

The tickets belong in the closing file, not the glovebox

Put them with the plat, the septic permit, and the electrical rough-in inspection.

A future buyer’s inspector asks for slab records on any building with a finished floor. On a barndominium, or a shop that doubles as living space, he asks harder. A stack of batch tickets showing a 4,000 PSI mix, a plasticizer, and no water added is a good thing to hand him. It’s a record from the plant, not just from how the floor looks, that the slab got the mix it was sold with.

The tickets also shape how a workmanship talk goes for anyone who works on that slab later. A finishing contractor who takes over a floor with a known mix strength knows what he’s grinding into. One who takes over a slab with no records is guessing. Guessing gets priced.

Every other paper on a build can be printed again. Plans get reprinted, permits get pulled again, and invoices get emailed twice. A batch ticket exists once, on one piece of paper, in the cab of a truck that’s leaving.

Take the copy. Photograph the water line. Put the stack in the file with the closing papers, and the question of what went into your building has an answer for as long as it stands.

Questions owner-builders ask about concrete batch tickets

Owner-builders watching an acreage pour ask these four the most, and the batch ticket sits at the center of each.

Can I refuse a load?

Yes. The concrete becomes yours when you accept it. A load that shows up past its time limit, or at the wrong design strength, is a load you can turn around. Nobody enjoys doing it, and that’s exactly why it has to happen before the chute swings.

Should I be checking slump myself?

You don’t need a slump cone to see a problem. Concrete that pours like soup instead of oatmeal is telling you plenty. On a pour big enough to justify it, a slump test at the back of the truck is the standard check. The method is ASTM C143, and any testing lab runs it. On a small home pour, watching the chute and reading the water-added box gets you most of the way.

Who signs the ticket, me or the crew?

Whoever accepts the load signs it, and on most jobs that’s the crew foreman. That’s fine. Ask for your own copy anyway, one per truck. The signature accepts the delivery, and the copy is your record.

What if the crew already added water before I got there?

The ticket still records it. That’s the point of the box. Ask what the load was doing that needed thinning. Most drivers and foremen will tell you straight, and the answer usually has more to do with wait time than with anybody’s habits.