Architectural Concrete Repair Category No.2. Honeycombing
Honeycombing occurs due to lack of compaction. I've often seen, heard and read that honeycombing is attributed to poor workmanship as lack of compaction seems to be equated with not bothering to compact, consolidate or vibrate the mix adequately. I won't go off on one but this is one dimensional thinking as equally the case could be that there is congested reinforcement that does not easily allow for full compaction for example. Anyway that's up for further discussion which hopefully will happen. Back to the repair category...
Honeycombing sits closely with construction damage as a category of repair.
By definition, if it is hard to compact concrete it is usually in a hard to reach place (with a poker vibrator or similar). Hence, honeycombing will naturally tend to occur at the extremity of a pour... at the base, corner, edge or some form of junction point (knockout for example). Honeycombing may look like a disaster but is forgiving as a repair mostly because of it's positioning. Please see Category No.1 for more information on this.
Honeycombing tends to give nice sharp deep holes to fill with no feather edges so a flush repair can be achieved nicely. The big difference between honeycombing and construction damage is that usually there can be quite a significant hydration staining 'cloud'. This can clearly be seen in the blog image. If you want to get rid of this tonal variation then decent colour matching will be required.
