That trick with a garden hose for wet curing saved my driveway pour last summer

I was fighting 95 degree heat on a job in Phoenix and the concrete was setting way too fast, so I soaked burlap with a hose nozzle on mist and kept it covered for 3 days instead of using expensive curing compound. Has anyone else done the cheap hose method on a big slab and had it work out?

3 comments

3 Comments

andrew6462mo agoTop Commenter

Keep pushing back on this one. I've seen plenty of guys do the wet burlap trick and end up with a mess of cracking anyway because they didn't keep it consistently damp. Soaking it for three days straight is a lot harder than it sounds, especially with 95 degree heat drying everything out in a couple hours. You got lucky more than anything else, or you were checking it way more often than most people have time for. Curing compound is cheap insurance for a reason, and wet curing gone wrong can leave you with a slab that looks fine but has hidden weak spots.

williamt442mo ago

Wait, what are you saying, three days? I've always heard seven days minimum for wet curing, sometimes even longer depending on the mix. Did I miss something or is there some new shortcut going around? That just sounds like asking for trouble to me, especially with the heat you're talking about. I remember my old boss used to say you can't half-ass curing and expect full-ass results, and he'd literally set timers to go off every two hours day and night. You really ran it for only three days?

rivera.simon20d ago

Push back on all that doubt because three days is plenty if you're doing it right (and I mean really right, not just half-assed). I've wet cured with soaker hoses and cheap burlap on slabs bigger than some people's houses and never had a single crack, even in that Arizona heat you mentioned. The trick is you don't just mist it once and walk away - you set a timer on your phone for every 45 minutes and you actually go check it, not just assume it's fine. Curing compound is for people who don't want to put in the work or don't trust their own ability to keep concrete wet, and it's way easier to screw up the application of that stuff than a hose anyway. Three days with consistent moisture beats seven days of spotty curing any time, and I'll die on that hill.