The TRUTH About Dry Pour vs Wet Pour Concrete!! Strength Test - You WON'T Believe the results!!

Dry Pour Concrete has been the craze lately on social media and testing has not been done to show its true strength compared to standard wet pour concrete. In this video we dive into everything you need to know about dry poured concrete and whether or not its stronger then traditional wet poured concrete.

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[textualchocolate]

This video has proven to me that I need a shop press machine for my wife’s cornbread!

[andymeyer]

Geotechnical engineer here, my last job was in airport pavements. We test both new and existing pavements when performing construction and evaluations. There are some less industrialized countries that will dry pour patches, I’ve cored and performed split tensile tests on tens of thousands of samples, the dry pours were always laughably poor quality.

[vaughnmilburn]

I am a concrete engineer. No matter what, dry cure concrete will always be considerably weaker for many reasons; however, you can increase the strength by keeping the slab flooded with water and covered for at least a week. It would be better to flood and cover for thirty days. No matter what you do, it will not ever reach even half the strength of wet pour concrete!

[jonsiccardi]

Most people don't know how concrete even works. It's a chemical reaction and it must be mixed wet. It's DESIGNED to be wet mixed. I don't want to mix concrete either, but dry pour is not even close to a solution. It's laziness and or ignorance to how concrete works. Great video sir. You saved a bunch of people from wasting time and money!

[berserkerusmc]

On the side of my garage, I dry poured a slab that was 12' x 24' and 6" deep. With a wire mesh. There's a couple out there that have quite a few videos on how to do a dry pour. I can't recall the name of their YouTube channel. The process they use and what I did was the following. After finishing the pour, I misted the slab once every hour for a total of 3 times. Waited an hour after the last misting. Then a long soak every hour for each inch of depth... in my case that was 6 long soaks. The hose nozzle was wide open. I then let it cure for 4 weeks.

That was almost 2 years ago. I park my 2005 dodge ram 1500 4x4 quad cab on it. Last month, on that slab, I had it up on 4 jack stands, with no damage to the slab. It took me about three days to do a complete brake rebuild, and all of the weight of my truck was on those stands.

I'm not disputing that wet pour is stronger, but I think that you made an error by only misting and not doing the long soaks. I think your results would be better if you were to do that.

[Poppageno]

In the 80's we would use drypour for building decks and fences, it saved time. Then in 86 I got a job in the local cement plant and at one point worked in the lab. Cement is made by cooking limestone/marble, iron, shale together into clinker. Clinker is then cooled somewhat and ground down into a powder finer than face powder, at that point it is called cement. When you mix cement with sand and aggregates(rocks) it is concrete mix, add water and it becomes hard and is concrete.
What happens when you add water is the cement powder crystalizes. This fills tiny spaces between rocks and sand and other crystals, bonding and putting pressure in all directions and during this phase change emits heat. Once the phase change(curing) has gone thru 3 days some 80% of the strength is there, some 3 weeks later and it is at 90%. It never stops curing. HTH

[mikelouis]

This is why the teaching of basic science is still so critical.

[mikeazeka]

I'm a civil engineer. We learned 40 years ago that dry pour concrete will always be very weak compared to a cured wet pour concrete mix. The difference can be 10 times stronger for wet pour, and the dry pour will have many pockets of weakness, the wet pour will be uniformly strong. Not a surprising outcome.

[chrisb]

Thank you for this. I instinctively knew “dry pouring” wasn’t good but you have proved it without a doubt.

[homebuilthappiness]

Thanks for this video. There are plenty of DIY folks that swear by the dry pour method.

I don't, I just wet pour. For me it just seems easier

[marcesto]

I dry poured a spillway for a farm pod. I was a bit skeptical but it has worked well and looks good. It doesn’t carry a heavy load just provides a water channel and prevents erosion

[joerios]

Was really considering a dry pour for my shed build but after your video I'm sticking to the wet pour. Thank you it was a very educational video.

[davedunn]

I used dry pour on a post for a pergola several years ago and had to take it down for a bigger project and it was crumbly underneath so lesson learnt

[BluegrassStoic]

wow thank you for taking the time to fill the internet with real information! priceless

[bobbarbarin]

I was told by an individual who worked in concrete for his whole life, he said that the hardest walls in a building was the cistern. A room which held water for the house hold to use. He said that cement will cure for 50 years and an abundance of water on the cement will strengthen it. Always amazed me, whether it true or not, can’t say.

[JBeans]

Gotta love data, it doesn’t lie! After watching this, I don’t know if I would ever do a dry pour for anything, not even a stepping stone. There is just not enough integrity ! Thanks for doing this test and sharing! Kinda like a myth-buster episode, without the explosions! 😮

[Xchangeevery]

I’m in concrete many years and definitely knew the results even though I have never done what you did to test it, I have my definite instincts that it would be crumbly by what happens to a bag of concrete after it gets rained on. But you are the man! For making a video and doing the test. Bravo 👏

[sgsax]

I'm glad to see the experiment completed, but can't see how anyone would have predicted a different outcome. The strength of the concrete comes from the cement and water being mixed in and helping everything stick together. There's a reason why you don't see manufacturers recommending it. Dry pour concrete is like baking a cake without mixing the ingredients together. You get similar undesirable results. Thanks for demonstrating what a bad idea this is.

[rbfracing]

I never used dry pour concrete, always wet, however I have a shed that needs a new floor.
I started looking into the dry pour concrete method for this particular job.
One aspect of the dry pour concrete method, is the procedure of adding water. I think this is very important step when using the dry pour concrete method.
The first misting of the dry pour i believe to enough to set the top and finish of the mix, and let dry.
I believe the next misting should actually be soaking of the dry pour concrete, continuously until the dry pour is flooded with water to ensure water has soaked throughout the mix.

The method of misting, stop, misting, stop, misting, stop just creates a layer on top of the dry pour mix, to never get the water it needs, .
Like to hear peoples comments, if what i say, makes sense.
I don't expect dry pour concrete to be 100% equal to the wet pour, but thought there would be better results with the dry pour if soaked with a different method.

[xavil]

I poured a thin layer of dry concrete in an area of my backyard where I mounted a gazebo. I did it just to prevent weeds with the intention of pouring an actual concrete slab afterwards. after spreading a thin layer, I compacted it with a lawn roller, then sprayed water a few times. It's still there. I think the error here was that a dry pour has to be way thinner or water it a lot more than just 4 times like this guy did.