Water curing is one of the most boring, list liked, and time-consuming task. Every owner hates doing it but still does it because there are no alternative solutions available.
If you want your building to attain maximum strength, then water curing your building is a very important step. Proper Curing makes concrete to attain its maximum strength.
If you don’t do curing, concreate won’t get its full strength.
For water curing, you have two options:
1) Do it yourself
2) Assign some laborers
1) Do it yourself:
This is the most popular option most building owners take. In this case, the owner usually does their building curing with the help of their family members.
Pros:
1) You will cure building better than laborers
2) Saves money on labor expense
Cons:
1) Time and energy waste
2) Assign to some laborers:
Some house owners go with this method. In this method, owners usually assign curing to some laborers by making extra payments.
In most cases, only one laborer will do curing work.
Pros:
1) No need to worry about curing
2) If you are a busy professional, it’s a good choice
Cons:
1) Cost extra for doing water curing
2) Most laborers don’t cure properly
3) You still need to watch laborers
Now let’s move on to the building curing process.
Materials Required for Curing:
1) Water Pumps
2) ¾” Flexible pipe role
3) Molding electrical pipe & bend
4) Gunny bags
1) Water Pumps:
There are two types of pumps –
a) Centrifugal Pumps
b) Submersible Pumps
a) Centrifugal Pumps:
These are the pumps that you keep outside the sump. If you are building a 3-floor building, I don’t recommend these types of pumps. Because the water pressure won’t be sufficient above the 1st floor, your hand will get pains during curing because of low water pressure.
Moreover, once the house is built, you must buy a new submersible pump to pump water to the overhead tank.
So it’s better to go with the submersible pump at the beginning itself.
b) Submersible Pumps:
These are the pumps that you keep inside the sump. They are more powerful than the centrifugal pumps and are costlier as well.
I recommend everyone use these types of pumps for water curing and construction.
If you are building a G+3 floor building, then 1 HP submersible pump is enough.
2) ¾” Flexible pipe role:
You may see 2 types of pipes at the nearby hardware store. One is SMOOTH, and the other is a ROUGH quality pipe.
I recommend everyone go with SMOOTH quality pipes.
The reason is that smooth-quality pipes are easier to maintain and move and are very flexible compared to Rough quality pipes.
I used both pipes. And after using rough-quality pipes, I never go with them again.
3) Molding ¾” electrical pipe & bend:
Take 5 feet of molding ¾” electrical pipe and attach one long bend to that pipe. Attach that electrical pipe to ¾” flexible pipe to it.
Use this arrangement to do curing hight walls, pillars, and non-reachable areas.
Water flows properly on both sides and from Top to Bottom
using this method.
My DAD originally discovered this idea, so I give this credit to him.
When our laborers saw us using this pipe method to curing, they were surprised to see it. And told, we have been in the construction field for more than 6 years and never saw this type of curing method. It’s a good idea… like they appreciated it.
Give it a try…
4) Gunny bags/Hessian cloth:
Many of you may have noticed some users who wrap gunny bags/hessian cloth around pillars for curing. This is a good practice for curing your Pillars. There is no doubt about it.
We also bought Gunny bags for curing purposes. But it didn’t work out for us when it came to practical application.
Hessian cloths are wrapped around pillars, and it takes time to wrap and remove them.
Let’s go to the particle scenario…
Laborer raises pillars. After raising pillars, do you allow 15 days for pillar curing only?
In most cases, your answer will be NO.
So if you don’t allow extra pillar curing time, workers will start building the wall within 3 days.
Just for 3 days, only you have to wrap hessian cloth and remove that, or laborers won’t be able to continue the work.
It’s a time, energy, and money waste to do this process for just 3 days.
There is one exception to the case:
Some pillars don’t have all walls next to them… or it takes time to build walls next to those pillars. In that case, I recommend wrapping hessian cloth around such pillars and curing.
Because if there are no walls, it won’t disturb laborers to continue working.
So plan hessian clothes properly and bring only the required amount, not for all the pillars.
Curing Tips:
1) Do water curing early in the morning once, and in the evening after finishing the work
2) Don’t leave the water where any new work is done. Allow at least 6 hours for the cement to set, or else the cement will come off
3) If you are not wrapping hessian cloth to pillars, do pillar curing as much as possible.
4) Arrange one extra valve near the sump. If you feel the water pressure is too much and water is wasting… then just open the sump valve so water pressure will decrease, and water will go to the sump itself.
5) For RCC curing, follow the below method to stop water on a mold for curing purposes.
https://houseconstructionguide.com/after-molding-same-day-build-border-to-stop-water/
6) Ask your electrician to arrange to start the motor on every floor.
If you don’t make such an arrangement, the laborer must go to the ground floor to switch ON the motor.
It’s simply a waste of time. Waste of their time == Waste of your money.
7) I highly recommend having an Individual valve and pipe for each floor.
It may cost you a little extra initially, but believe me. It’s worth spending.
We took shortcuts and arranged 1 pipe and valve for every two floors, and I regretted every day taking this shortcut to save money.
Take it seriously. Very seriously.
Taking pipes from one floor to another floor for curing is a waste of time and energy. Moreover, on all the floors, you need water for one or the other reason.
Moving pipes here and there is a tedious and time-consuming process.
I highly recommend having an individual valve and pipe on every floor.
8) For curing plastering, you need High-pressure water to do curing properly, or else you will get hand pain while curing. So the submersible pump is recommended.
9) Make a hole in the walls to escape excess water left for curing purposes, or else all the water will stop in the RCC itself, making it difficult to work
10) Properly close the sump cover with some centering wooden plate and put some weight on that cover so kids don’t open the cover easily.
If you keep it open, due to dust pump may stop working. So properly close and use a submersible pump.
11) Buy the pump nearby an offline store, not an online store.
If the pump stops working, you can easily replace it offline with another one.
In my case, the pump stopped working 1 month after the warranty expired. But still, the local store owner replaced another new pump free of cost because we bought all the hardware products from his shops.
I hope this guide is helpful.
If you have any questions, please post them in the comment section below.