Driveway, Concrete and Seals, Part 2

Safety gear on! Check!
All tools and materials assembled! Check!
Hole chiseled out and prepped! Check!

Open the container of hydraulic cement and read the directions. See the tiny little scoop. Look at the big hole. Look at the tiny little scoop again.  Look at the big hole. Think to myself, 3 scoops of the cement plus one scoop of water is not going to be enough to fill that hole.  Read the directions again. Ponder ponder ponder...

Does hydraulic cement expand? The directions say it does. At what rate? No mention of this. So... how much to I need to mix up? This stuff isn't cheap and I don't want to waste it.

Right. Take off all the safety gear. Come inside and get online.  Call the manufacturer, UGL.  Tech support it out to lunch.  Okay, write a query and do a Google search.  Everything I read says that the cement expands to fit the hole, crack, whatever, but no actual specifications or quantifiable numbers.  Dammit.

Time to zen it.  I used the scoop included and mixed up my first batch. Not enough by degrees of magnitude, no matter what expansion properties it may have!  Unlike that spray foam insulation that seems to have TARDIS-like qualities inside just one can...  Anyone ever use that?   Okay, time to Zen it bigger. I used and old coffee cup as a scoop and mixed up another  batch.  Too much, but not by a large amount. I managed to stuff the rest of cement by hand (wearing protective gloves, of course), smoothed it out with my new trowel and voila! It's done.  On reflection, if I'd used the coffee cup initially, that might have been the perfect amount.  Then again, it might have dried too quickly to be useful.  I felt like Goldilocks!  This is too much, this is not enough...but what's enough?

As for the 3-5 minute hydraulic cement drying time?  Don't bet on it. It's REALLY fast! As directed, I used cold water to mix in with the cement. The directions say to slow the drying and/ or curing time, mix with colder water. Any colder, and I would have had to use ice water! Part way through mixing the larger batch, it was already hardening up in the mixing container, and I wasn't slacking or being a slow poke.

Lesson learned?  Mix up multiple small batches and use them as needed. Back to chiseling out the 2nd hole.