Pro tip: tack strip nails into concrete, and the debate over glue vs. nails
I was on a job in Tucson last month and a helper kept nailing tack strip straight into a slab that had no pad. He got maybe 6 feet before the strip popped loose. I think we should guess the soft spots and skip nails, but a guy I work with says you just use the right concrete nails and a ramset and never worry. The problem is not all slabs are the same, and a bad guess means redoing the whole stretch. What do you all do when you can't tell if the slab is going to hold?
A ramset doesnt magically fix a crumbly slab, itll just blow a hole through the soft stuff and you're back where you started. Testing a few spots with a nail and hammer first tells you more than any tool will.