Assuming they are still dry, of course. A local home center guy said yes, prolonged exposure to air renders it unusable. How old is old? How to test? My own little spot tests (small mounds on a board) are really crumbly, but I haven't compared it to fresh stuff yet.
I'm not a super expert on concrete and mortar but I've used enough over the years to find that it's hygroscopic and will absorb moisture from the air if it's not kept sealed up. When I was installing automatic doors and store fronts, I used a lot of QUIKRETE® and self leveling cement for thresholds and such so I kept the stuff in 5 gal buckets with snap on air tight lids. ^_^
TDD
Existential,
Air contains moisture. If the container is open and the relative humidity is often elevated, then you can't keep the powder dry. Open and dry are contradictory conditions. I'd guess that the salesman knows what local conditions are like.
Dave M.
Open bags go bad pretty fast, maybe a year or two in temperate climates., and that includes even bags where the open end is rolled down. Don't know about keeping it in buckets as Dufus mentioned. I throw it away if it any of the powder has hardened. It's cheap enough, and if it doesn't bond right you've got a mess and wasted a lot of labor.
Yes, they go bad. You can tell because the bag gets hard :)
If there are large (lemon - orange size) hard lumps in the bag, dump it. If the lumps are small (pea - bean) and the rest is still powder, use it being sure to crush the lumps.
Around (central Florida) here an unopened bag is bad in a year or so. I keep both opened and unopened bags in a garbage bag tied shut and even an opened bag is good for a year.
Does this mean that men who get hard are bad too?
It's a good idea to keep the stuff in the refrigerator to keep it dry, but putting oranges, lemons and peas in the bag are downright stupid.
The use of a garbage bag makes it easy to dispose it when it goes bad. Smart moove!
Yes...You can tell if it gets lumps in it or in the case of plaster or setting type bags of joint compound it will smell musty...
Here's the thing: these bags, containers have been around for years, and are still smooth, powdery (as opposed to being truly "dry", in a humidity sense -- kept inside, in the northeast.. The masonry guy says that they definitely can, will go bad, even tho they look ok.
I'm going to do some test patches on wood, compare, report back.
Yes, the humidity in the air makes the cement go lumpy.
I really don't see why the manufacturers of cement products don't have a plastic liner within the bag to prevent that from happening when the bag is in storage.
If you've recently purchased some redicrete, I'd store it in a clear plastic bag. You can get heavy duty clear plastic bags for storing asbestos in.
Portland Cement is made by extensive baking of clay and lime. Moisture, in any amount, allows them to react to form silicates. There is plenty of mo isture in desert air to allow it to set over time. The only way you are ke eping it from setting over time is to keep it in an oven or in an airtight container, as others have mentioned.
That being said, you can also place the concrete dry and let it set up with only the moisture in the earth your casting against. The breaks tend to b e high when compared to overly wetted concrete. I actually ran across this thread while trying to find the PSI of air set concrete. It looks like il l have to test it myself, which will be easy enough with the curing room.
We can't see "this thread".
You've responded to a long-outdated newsgroup post. (2012) Maybe it was archived by Google. Maybe you responded to a reprint on a commercial site. (Some websites try to make money by reprinting newsgroup posts and presenting them as their own forum.)
Google archives newsgroup (Usenet) posts with their search engine. Google also links newsgroups to their Google Groups service. *But Google Groups is not the same thing as Usenet newsgroups.* If you don't know what newsgroups are you might benefit from an explanation:
If you want to take part in current newsgroup discussions you might want to consider getting a real newsreader. Newsgroups use NNTP protocol rather than the HTTP protocol used for webpages. It's a different format, not optimized for viewing in a browser. For a list of newsreader software, see here:
You can then subscribe to a news server to access various groups. One popular, free server is here:
Your ISP may also provide newsgroup access.
Oh my! I can see the thread, but then I use Google Groups, not your client based reader, which you claim is so superior.
It's one way of accessing newsgroups though, so stop spreading FUD. I use GG as do some of the other posters here. And it actually has advantages. Nothing to install, no news server needed, can access it from any computer. And as noted above, I can see the whole thread.
Why should they? Their post obviously made it here. And as I've told you before, on GG it's clear as day that post is 2 years old. The date is right on the header, I'm looking at it on GG right now. In any forum it seems odd to respond to a question from 2 years ago, but so what? An answer they give today is then still there for anyone else that comes across it.
So does GG and it works fine for me. You're making the assumption that this is a GG problem, when the reality is you have someone googling for a problem, finding some old thread and then replying to it. Who cares? Why should they have to learn how newsgroups work, evaluate which newsreader they want to install, subscribe to a news server, when all they want to know is about a bag of cement?
You get a few of these posts, so what? All this post does is revive an old thread. If it bothers you so much, just ignore it.
If it's still loose then it's probably usable for most home projects. When it absorbs too much water from the air it turns into a bag sized rock.
The trick to saving concrete, mortar or grout is to put it in a white bucket with a top that seals. The pool chemical buckets with a screw on top are good for this.
replying to gfretwell, Scott Franco wrote: Thanks for the thread here. I am on about my third bag of "gone bad" cement here in California, all types, sackcrete, motar, stucco. All ready mix, all worked fine when new. Its not expensive, like $2 a bag, but it bothers me to have to throw most of a bag away, it can't be great for the environment.
Seal the leftovers up in a DRY plastic pail
Gotta love you California libbies- "the environment" will be just fine, not to worry...
replying to Vic Smith, Thad wrote: You are on the money with that statement. I used type N that I don’ t know the age of and parged a chimney. I didn’t think it looked right when mixing it but I applied it anyway. The next day I had to remove everything I did. It had crumbled as though there was hardly any cement in it. Also the mortar had not hardened except for a lot of small pellets no bigger than a pea and they were not rock hard.
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