Repairing Cracked Concrete

There’s an old saying amongst concrete professionals, “There’s only two guarantees with concrete. It’ll get hard, and it’ll crack.” Although there are best practices that can be followed, it’s fairly rare to find any significantly sized concrete pour that doesn’t have some sort of crack – whether it’s a hairline crack or a something significant (i.e., structural).

Addressing cracks in concrete is always done on a case-by-case basis. Pictured above is a relatively simple (albeit, not visually perfect) solution that uses pliable mastic and sand to fill in the cracks and makes them less noticeable.

Concrete staples

For projects where a concrete coating or some sort of resurfacing will be applied, “concrete staples” can be epoxied into place to help stabilize the affected area. See pictures below:

Incorporating cracks into a pattern

Another solution to addressing cracked concrete is to incorporate the cracks into a design. This can be done with either our Stone Coat finish or Classic Texture finish. See reference pictures below:

Demolishing and re-pouring concrete

Sometimes cracked concrete is beyond repairing and needs to be replaced. Usually this happens as a result of inadequate reinforcement (not using structural rebar) or pouring concrete over poor soil conditions (non-compacted fill, or pouring over soil with lots of expansive clay). In cases like this, the best long term solution is to simply demolish the old concrete and pour new concrete. See reference pictures below: