Dry Pour Concrete VS Wet Pour Concrete - No One Else Is Telling You This

hey guys Mike here with everything about concrete now in today's video we're going to talk a little bit about dry poured concrete versus wet poured concrete and why why I think dry poured concrete really isn't the way to go for you if you're a DIY or a homeowner [Music] all right so I just want to explain a couple things to you that you may or may not know about concrete now concrete is made to be mixed with water because the cement part of the concrete the gray cement fine powder in the concrete when mixed with water creates a paste and that paste needs to get wrapped around the sand get wrapped around the the Rocks the aggregate it's the glue that holds everything together and if that paste isn't evenly distributed throughout the the whole mix whether it's two inches thick or three inches or four inches or six inches if it's not evenly distributed then your concrete's not going to be very strong it might be strong you know at the top and not at the bottom it might not be strong enough in the middle so if you're just gonna go sprinkle water on the surface of the concrete you know over and over again for multiple hours you're not creating a paste in the mix all you're doing is is wetting the concrete some of the cement might not even hydrate you know hydration is the the chemical reaction that takes place between the cement and the water that and it's the hydration is what makes the concrete Harden so how do you know you're evenly Distributing moisture or water throughout the thickness of the slab if you're just sprinkling water on the surface you're actually probably weakening the surface because you're adding so much water at the top and very little at the bottom and maybe just a little bits getting into the middle so you're creating a very uneven uh watered slab that's not going to be very strong now when you when you pre-mix the concrete whether it's from bags or out of a concrete truck like this the concrete is mixed very very evenly throughout every inch of the concrete whether it's like I said this one's four inches thick could be five inches could be six inches whatever it's mixed evenly so you've got an even water to cement ratio water cement ratio is very very important with concrete use generally the lower the water to cement ratio it's it's basically weighed you know the the weight of water versus the weight of cement and there's a way of calculating that to get a water to cement ratio and that's that's how they determine strength of concrete and mixed designs um but for you I mean all you need to know is the the the mixture needs to be mixed evenly you can't have a lot of water at the surface and hardly any at the bottom and expect to get a really evenly strengthened concrete slab um in a slab like this you can see it is pretty easy to to pull around the concrete was it was pretty easy to float out the edges and then screed the concrete off and then you can see my daughter Tia here is putting on a nice smooth surface with The Bull Float basically just going down and back and it's smoothing out the surface and getting it really really smooth versus you know when you dry pour concrete you've got to dump the bags out dry you know you kind of you kind of rake them around very similar probably although it's a little bit more workable when the concrete's mix like this and then you got to screed the concrete oh you gotta you gotta kind of like saw the the screed back and forth and back and forth to kind of make the Rocks settle and bring up the fines of the dry mix and then you gotta either either you know use a paint roller I guess to roll the surface to to maybe smooth out the the screeding marks some people don't even do that they just leave the screening marks from what I've seen and then you've got to be really careful to sprinkle the water on the surface so you don't uh you don't blow away the fines on the surface and and expose the aggregate whereas here you mix you it's in you mix up the concrete with a paste like this and when you mag float the surface you bring some of that paste to the surface and you can see how smooth that gets on the surface and then to go to finish it I mean we let this after we pour it and both loaded this we let this set up for maybe 15 or 20 minutes and then you can see Darren here he's smoothing out the edges he's rounding that edge off with an edger the concrete here is still pretty soft and you can see how easy that is now to round out the edges versus if this was dry you'd be fighting the the rocks and the dry aggregate on the edges and trying to fill in any voids when you when you put an edger in like that you're basically moving rocks kind of towards the inside of the slab I guess because you're creating a space now between the two by four and the concrete a little bit with the edger now when it's when the concrete has moisture in it when it's wet mixed like this that's pretty easy to do when it's dry mix you're really fighting the aggregate and now we're cutting a joint in here because you know if this does want to crack we want to give it a place to crack and I let I actually let the concrete set up a little bit more after I Edge it so it's kind of firm and it holds its shape really really well but you can still see how easy it is for me to Joint that in a whack wet Mix Concrete versus a dry mix I don't even know I don't even think I could do this in a dry mix and create a really nice looking joint like this I think you'd have to maybe saw the join in afterwards so I mean and I've done this for a long long time um and I've even done a dry pour mix so I know it's going to be very difficult to cut a joint in like that versus when you have Pace to work with see right there I'm scraping up a little bit of paste off the surface maybe to fill in a tiny little void in the surface so when you have moisture and paste at the surface to work with you can mag float the concrete out like this after it sets up a little bit and get ready to put some type of finish on it now this one we're going to put just a light broom textured finish on it and then we're gonna leave like the picture frame look with the edger and the Groover Mark in the middle to give it you know a little bit more of an enhanced look than just just like a basic sand finish that you'd get out of a dry pour mix so I want you guys to tell me in the comments below you know do you think do you think pouring a little slab like this is difficult using wet poured concrete whether you're going to use a bag mix or you know Ready Mix Concrete versus say you know dumping dry bags of concrete in here leveling it out trying to get a nice finish on the surface and I don't even think you can get a broom finish a broom textured finish with a dry pore you'd just be basically brooming off the fines of the surface and exposing the aggregate again so I think that's out of the question um you can see we're not this isn't we're not it's not much effort here really to mag float the surface out and really work up some really nice cream on the surface so you can get a broom textured to it you could actually stamp this is if you were going to stamp a pattern in the surface this would be the time to stamp it you can see I'm going to just basically got a con two foot concrete broom there just gonna lightly drag it across the surface nice slow and easy and then that's going to be the finished slab right there you know that's a good nice non-slip type finish the the concrete here is going to be very very strong and durable throughout the entire mix because it was mixed evenly and then you know if we want to cure this thing after it after it dries up let's say the next day if we do want to cure make it cure slower and get even stronger we could just keep wetting wetting this down for a few days and not letting it dry out too fast you can see how easy it is just to drag a broom across the surface a really fine broom you don't want to you don't want it too rough and this will create a very nice finish nice looking slab so you guys let me know dry poured versus wet poured concrete um I know there's a ton of videos out there right now on dry Port stuff everybody's pushing dry poor dry poor dry pour but I mean do you really know how strong that's going to be down the road do you really know if the concrete is evenly hydrated throughout the thickness of the slab are all did all the cement particles come in contact with water or moisture so they can properly Harden uh I mean I think you can all admit that with a dry pour you're not creating any type of a paste you're not creating a glue to you know Circle and circle the Aggregate and circle this the sand you know to create a nice strong mix there's no glue you're not making any type of paste you're just wetting the stuff in yes I mean concrete will get hard if you if you wet it if you put moisture to it because it will I mean the chemical reaction between cement particles and water will start to take place but how even is that you know how even is that chemical reaction taking place is that are you over wetting the surface I mean if you if you add too much water to the surface of concrete you're gonna you're gonna create a very high water to cement ratio right at the surface which is going to weaken that the concrete only needs so much water to hydrate and if you over hydrate it it's going to weaken it and I've seen as a matter of fact I've had some people call me and text me pictures of concrete that has uh they've dry poured concrete and it's starting to flake already and peel off on the surface I'll show you some pictures of one right here so here's one you can see all the screed marks in it there's still quite a bit aggregate but here's the peel and I mean you can't just add all kinds of water to the surface and expect the surface to be really strong it's just going to weaken the surface so much that the paste or actually the cement particles at the surface won't even bond with the aggregate underneath it and that's really unfortunate that's a pretty big slab right there so you guys let me know what you think um are you gonna are you gonna continue to maybe do dry pour concrete or have you changed your mind you know I would definitely recommend doing a wet pour if you need help with that down in the description you can just get a hold of me I can try to help you out but again guys thanks for watching we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 44,299

Keywords: concrete, how to concrete, diy concrete, how to pour concrete, how to form concrete, concrete finishing techniques, concrete skills, concrete floor, concrete slab, stamped concrete, how to, concrete tools, how to pour a concrete slab, how to pour a concrete floor, how to pour a concrete driveway, how to pour a concrete patio, how to build concrete steps, pouring concrete, finishing concrete, dry pour concrete, dry pour concrete slab, dry pour concrete driveway

Id: hFzbpDHjbjE

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023