Pro tip: leveling compound needs way more water than the bag says

Spent a whole Saturday in my Edmonton basement fighting a self-leveling pour that kept cratering, turns out my bag mix was too dry from storing it in the garage all winter. I tossed it and re-did a 10x12 area with the exact ratio from the manufacturer's site, not the bag, and it flowed perfect in 20 minutes flat. Anyone else had bags go bad from cold storage, or was it just me?

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the_cameron2mo ago

My buddy Rick had a bag of patch compound that lived in his shed for two winters in Regina. He mixed it up last spring to fix a crack in his basement floor and it set up like concrete before he could even trowel it flat. He ended up with a lumpy bump the size of a dinner plate that he had to grind down with an angle grinder. Took him half a day and a lot of swearing to get it level enough to lay vinyl over. He still keeps that bag in his shed, I think just to remind himself to read the moisture warnings. Cold storage is a real thing, that stuff soaks up every drop of damp air it can find.

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umathompson2mo ago

My friend Dana had a bag of joint compound that she kept in her garage, not even a shed. It sat through one humid summer and she used it to patch some drywall in her guest room. That stuff came out like peanut butter with rocks in it, no amount of water could smooth it back. She tried mixing it by hand and then with a drill attachment, but it just kept clumping. She finally gave up and threw the whole bucket in the trash, then went out and bought a fresh bag that she brought inside her house right away. Now she keeps all her drywall stuff in a plastic bin with a lid, even in the summer heat, because that lesson stuck with her.

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