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Tried a new concrete curing blanket on a cold pour in Denver
We had a small foundation pour scheduled for a Tuesday morning when the forecast said 35 degrees. I bought a new type of blanket that claimed to work down to 25 degrees without extra heat. After we placed the concrete and covered it, the temp dropped to 28 overnight. The next day, the surface was still soft and we had to delay stripping the forms by two full days. I learned that the blanket's rating is for the air under it, not the ground temperature. Has anyone found a good way to check ground temp before a cold weather pour?
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harperschmidt3d ago
Got burned by that exact thing on a garage slab last fall, and it really shows how product specs never tell the whole story. It feels like everything from cooking times on frozen food to battery life claims work the same way, where the perfect lab conditions don't match the messy real world. For ground temp, I just use a cheap meat thermometer stuck in the dirt the day before, because the actual earth holds cold way longer than the air. You can't trust the blanket rating alone, you have to know what it's sitting on.
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shane2442d ago
Tell me about it, I once trusted a blanket rating and ended up babying a slab for a week like it was my firstborn! @harperschmidt is totally right about the ground holding the cold. I've seen frost still in the dirt at noon on a sunny 45-degree day. That meat thermometer trick is solid. Now I check the earth temp in three spots, like I'm checking a roast, because one shady corner can wreck your whole schedule. It's a humble way to learn you can't outsmart physics with a fancy blanket.
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