Floor Masters have been fixing concrete surfaces since 2000, and concrete crack repair is a big part of that. Concrete guys have a saying
There are 2 guarantees with a concrete slab, It will go hard and It will crack. and the other day I heard another line to the saying – if it doesn’t we will replace it.
It’s easy to see that concrete is a fundamental building block in the construction of almost every building and in many landscapes. Concrete is cost effective and durable. It is also worth noting that a crack in concrete does not need to be a big concern, and we can repair cracks in your concrete.
Concrete cracks for many reasons –
Shrinkage is the common – many people do not know that concrete shrinks as it cures, as the water evaporates the particles consolidate. The larger the slab, the greater the shrinkage. This can be evident in two ways – lots of “micro cracking” (very fine cracks) or larger cracks.
Settling cracks – you have just put a heavy slab on the ground and sometimes the ground will compress more in some areas than others. This can often result in the crack being higher on one side than the other, or in extreme cases, changing angles (i.e it sinks at one end).
Substrate movement – in areas with lots of clay in the ground, clay will swell with moisture and shrink when it dries out. These cracks often open and close with different weather cycles.
Subsidence – Where the ground moves or sinks and puts stress on the concrete. Slabs can sink or pull apart.
Understanding concrete crack repair
It is important to understand that a crack in concrete often goes right through the slab, and it can branch out as it goes down. The best concrete crack repair resin is thin, and able to follow the crack in the concrete deeper and make a stronger repair. We use Fast Fix, a hybrid polyurea concrete crack repair resin we import from the USA. Fast Fix is great for crack repair because it is water thin and able to really get down into the crack and “weld” it back together. It is also to follow the branches of the crack and repair the surrounding fractures.
Another bonus of the Fast Fix concrete crack repair resin, is that it cure quickly and we can allow traffic across the floor, or continue with additional floor repairs of coatings in as little as 15 minutes.