Article in Concrete Resurfacing on Garage Floor & Driveway

Do you have a driveway or garage floor that has cracks, stains or upheavals from your foundation settling? Would you like to make your home more attractive, and improve its resale value? Consider concrete resurfacing.

Concrete cracks for one of several reasons, the most common of which are differential expansion and foundation settling. Differential expansion is what makes potholes in roads. Water seeps into the concrete, and gets absorbed, much like it does in a sponge. When the water freezes, it expands, and the concrete cracks because it's not flexible enough. Foundation settling is more problematic; the ground underneath a home shifts over time, and the concrete slab may tilt, or get differential stresses put on it, causing cracks in the floors and in the walls. (Foundation settling is why many older homes have doors that stick, or windows that seem slightly out of true.)

A concrete resurfacing job sands down imperfections in your concrete floor and then coats it with a polymer based layer that repels water, seals cracks and resists stains. This surface also makes a good foundation for laying in tile or hardwood flooring, as it won't expand or contract to distort the floor afterwards.

The first step is a power washing. Using a high powered hose with hot water, often times with bleaching agents mixed in, the concrete floor is scoured clean, to lift out any embedded dirt that might interfere with the coating process. After the floor has been washed, the cracks get primed so that the concrete resurfacing can continue. Priming the cracks involves grouting them out, making the surface of the cracks, below the surface of the concrete; ready to accept a filling material, which is the next step.

Once the cracks are primed, they're filled with a repair material, which serves the same function as crazy glue when fixing a broken bowl. The material acts as an adhesive and a coating to keep the sides of the cracks from absorbing water. After the cracks are filled, they're reinforced with fabric, which is then sealed with an elastomeric base coating, which is then covered with polymer concrete. Once the polymer concrete has cured, it's ground down to match the rest of the surface of the slab, and then holes are filled with epoxy mortar, and then the surface is primed and coated, then covered with combined sealant/texture mix.

Once the sealant texture mix is down, a hopper gun is used to spray a texture pattern (with grains of sand that fix to the sealant coat) to give a decorative pattern and improve traction. Finally, a second coat of sealant is applied with rollers and allowed to dry for 48-72 hours to let it cure, before vehicles are allowed onto it.