Repair vs Replace
Winter Repairs: What Can and Cannot Be Done Cold
The apron outside my center overhead door split in the second week of January, right along the line where the rollback sets its wheel lift down. By the end of the month one side had dropped half an inch and…
When a Driveway Is Past Saving
The driveway I keep coming back to sits on a Rockrimmon hillside: about 900 square feet, poured in the late 1990s, with eleven cracks wider than a pencil, a 2 inch step where the slab meets the garage apron, and…
Patching Compounds That Actually Bond
The will-call window at our plant sells bagged product to whoever walks up, and I work that counter phone between dispatching loads. A guy bought two pails of resurfacer in the spring for a spalled patch by his garage door…
Resurfacing Over Old Concrete: When It Holds
The number that almost sold me on resurfacing was not the price. It was the word “Thursday.” A contractor looked at the drive aisle at my flex building, where twenty-two year old concrete has scaled across about 4,000 square feet,…
Slabjacking and Foam Lifting for Settled Concrete
The panel outside my garage door dropped about three quarters of an inch over four winters, enough that the lip caught the front of my wife’s car every time she pulled in. My first instinct — and it is the…
Crack Sealing vs Slab Replacement
I filled a crack in a 900 square foot shop floor outside Rockrimmon on a Tuesday, coated it Thursday, and got the phone call fourteen months later. The crack was back, dead straight through my flake, the full width of…
Spalled and Scaled Concrete After a Cold Winter
A homeowner in Shadyside called me in early April with photos of a driveway that looked like somebody had gone over it with a wire brush. The top eighth of an inch was gone in patches, sand showing through, aggregate…