"All Cracked Up" - Concrete Crack Repair
Brown is a very popular color for microfinished floors. After pulling up the tile, carpet, and linoleum in this home in Farmers Branch, Tx, the first thing we found was a jigsaw puzzle of concrete cracks running every which way but loose.
They were pretty bad so first we used an epoxy crack fill to stabilize them and then we skimmed on three coats of microfinish concrete overlay material to help cover them before finally applying a cola acid stain that creates a rich brown tone. We gave it a finishing touch by scoring it with a 36″ diamond pattern.
Cracks! We always get asked about this and we always reply, “There are two types of concrete, cracked and going to crack.” That’s the nature of concrete; and because all homes are reinforced with rebar (steel rods placed in the concrete before it sets up) then it’s normally nothing to worry about.
Almost all the homes we work on have cracks running through the floor. We like to think it gives the floor “panache”. That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything about it though, however, it’s not what you would call a true concrete crack repair. What we do is “crack fill” and it works very well.
With any cracks in the floor we use a two-part epoxy that is poured into the crack. The epoxy is very liquid. It flows almost like water so it penetrates deeply into the crack and once it hardens it “welds” both sides of the crack together. This type of repair works well with what we call non-moving cracks; the ones that are no longer growing or getting worse.
True concrete crack repair for moving cracks often requires the use of epoxy and steel clamps that straddle the crack and are inserted into slots cut into the concrete. (To date, we’ve never encountered a floor that required this; it’s a very unusual situation.) Once the cracks are filled we apply the microfinish concrete overlay.
This home required three coats because it had a lot of cracks and we wanted to minimize the possibility of a silhouette being visible. We wrapped it up with a stain, score, and concrete sealer. Our homeowners were very happy with the results.
