Tried wet-curing my garage slab for 10 days instead of the usual 3 and got a surprise

Everyone told me to just spray it down for a few days and call it good, but I decided to go the full 10-day wet cure on a 400-square-foot slab I poured in Austin last month. The result? It came out way harder than any slab I've done before, but I also got this weird white haze on about a third of the surface that didn't show up with shorter cures. I think I overdid the water and trapped too much moisture against the fresh concrete, if that makes sense. Learned that more curing isn't always better if you don't manage the water right, especially with our hard water here. Anyone else run into efflorescence from wet-curing too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

aaronrobinson26d ago

Buddy of mine did the same thing with his patio in San Antonio and ended up with a white crust so thick he had to power wash it twice. He said the extra cure strength wasn't worth the headache of scrubbing that stuff off.

hayes.oliver26d ago

Perfect, so now your buddy's patio looks like it's covered in salt from a giant pretzel. Twice the power washing just to get rid of the "extra strength" he paid extra for. That's the kind of upgrade where you end up with a stronger slab that you can't even see because it's buried under a science experiment. Might as well have just poured it in the dark and called it a day.