Shall I use Epoxy or cement grout for threaded bolts. 1

[aayjaber]

I am building a landscape structure from 4x4 redwood on a perimeter foundation built from stones and mortar. I embedded some of the J bolts in the foundation in concrete pockets.

I need to embed more threaded bolts in the foundation, I am using 1/2 bolts, I drilled with great difficulty many of the holes (using 3/4 drill bit). The drilled holes are connected to many cavities inside the stone/mortar matrix. That matrix is not 100% filled in has cavities. I think it will be too costly to pump in epoxy in the holes because much of the epoxy will go to fill the cavities around the hole first and some could be very big,

Is it possible to use cement grout in the holes where the grout will be pressured to fill the cavities around the hole and then embed the threaded bolts in the cement grout.

Is the cement grout comparable in strength to Epoxy, I am in fairly strong wind area and highly seismic active area as well.

 

[hokie66]

Are you an engineer? From your other posts, it appears you may be a builder or developer. If so, I think you need a local engineer to advise you on some of your problems rather than depending on a forum such as this, where you may be given misleading answers due to failure to adequately understand your problem.

 

[frv]

Although I agree with Hokie66 that you should consult an engineer for your issues, this is a fairly -traight forward issue. Cement grout will NOT work. You need to use epoxy. Cement-based grout (or any cement-based product such as concrete) is terrible in tension.

 

[aayjaber]

Thanks for your advise, this morning I decided to inject cement grout into the drilled holes and force the cement grout to fill the cavities around the drilled holes. After the grout set I used the drill bit to slowly drill through the still plastic (wet) cement grout out of the hole. Now I have holes that are not leaky because the cement grout fills the cavities around them. Will wait for a week until the cement grout sets and cures, will clean the holes again and inject epoxy then embed the threaded bolt.