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Concrete curing time

CH3skier's Photo CH3skier 17 Oct 2017

So how long does a tower foundation have to cure after being pured before a tower can be attached to it?
This post has been edited by CH3skier: 17 October 2017 - 06:49 PM
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vons's Photo vons 17 Oct 2017

Depends on the mix, if needed a high early strength mix can be used, so a day or two
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Lift Dinosaur's Photo Lift Dinosaur 18 Oct 2017

...but typically ... at a 2500-3000 psi yeild...5-7 days.
As vons stated, cure time can be accelerated with additives.
Dino
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CH3skier's Photo CH3skier 19 Oct 2017

Thank you both for the answers! Just seeing concrete pouring videos from various lift projects recently and thinking it's going to be a while waiting for the curing process.
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Kelly's Photo Kelly 20 Oct 2017

Adding to other posters good information – most towers and terminals would stand all by themselves if no cable weight or tension was applied.
In simplistic engineering terms the concrete acts like the sand at the base in tackling dummies.
Attached File  Tackle-dummy.jpg (95.7K)
Number of downloads: 8
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CH3skier's Photo CH3skier 21 Oct 2017

View PostKelly, on 20 October 2017 - 07:15 AM, said:

Adding to other posters good information – most towers and terminals would stand all by themselves if no cable weight or tension was applied.
In simplistic engineering terms the concrete acts like the sand at the base in tackling dummies.
Attachement Tackle-dummy.jpg

Thank you for the infomation Kelly!
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_litz's Photo _litz 21 Oct 2017

As noted above, it depends entirely on the mixture used.

Most construction projects use concrete that takes days (like stated above, 5-7 days) to fully cure.

Sometime you can get a faster cure, for example, when they rebuilt I-85 in Atlanta after the bridge fire last spring, they used a fast-cure concrete (basically like QuikCrete at Home Depot, but in vastly larger quantities), and rebuilt the entire bridge (six lanes per side x 300 feet long) in 41 days.

If you wanted to spend the money, there's no reason you can't pour a foundation for a lift that'll cure just as fast.
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