Can we talk about a 12x20 slab that went from a mess to mirror smooth in 48 hours?
Last month on a job in Reno, we poured a 12x20 patio and it came out looking like cracked peanut brittle by the next morning. The mix was running hot at 95 degrees and we had the trowel on it way too early, so the whole surface just blistered up on us. The foreman made us wait 48 hours, then we went back in with a hard trowel and a fresh batch of cure, and the difference was night and day. Has anyone else had luck saving a bad pour with a late trowel pass, or is it usually a lost cause by then?
Had a driveway pour go sideways the same way a few years back, mix was way too hot and we got ahead of ourselves with the trowel. We let it sit for two days, then wet it down and hit it with a hard trowel plus a power trowel after that. Came out way better than we deserved, though you could still see some faint blisters if you looked close in the right light. So yeah, a late pass can save it, but it depends on how deep the damage goes. If it's just surface crusting you're fine, but if the whole top inch is shot, no amount of troweling is gonna hide it.