How to Fix a Crack in a Concrete Foundation (NEW TECHNOLOGY)

in this video I'm gonna show you a simulation that I've got going here to try out a basement crack finishing product it's unique in that it doesn't just fill the crack but it also reinforces the crack too and you'll see that this is my simulated cracked concrete basement wall it's two concrete blocks I've put in wood spacers here the gap is about an eighth of an inch or so bound it all together with these clamps this is a what they call a semi solid blocks we get the flat face on both the front in the back the block is actually filled partially filled here it's hollow on the ends but it's filled here in the middle so we have a pretty close simulation of what a basement crack would be like and I'm going to go through the the three-step procedure for using this product but before I do I just want to explain it a little bit so this system is by a company called dry core they make some great basement subfloor tiles they also happen to make my favorite wall finishing panel for a basement its insulation and finished wall surface all in one but their crack product has three steps as I said this first step is to actually seal the crack superficially so we're not filling it yet we're just going to be putting this epoxy coating over the crack so that when we do go to inject the filler is not going to come out the face of the wall so this is the the inside face of the basement that's the crack we've got soil on the outside now we're going to be sealing this before filling except for the installation of these injection ports the idea is that the port is the only way that the filler can get in now normally you'd put a port like this about every 18 inches along the crack this is almost 16 inches from here to here so technically we would only need one but I'm going to put in two so that we can inject into one and if all goes well we should see the filler as it penetrates the full depth of the crack starting to come out here in which case we can seal that part and then start filling here too to complete our operations so this is going to be epoxy tin covered over sealed ready for injection so step two is the actual injection and it takes a two-part cartridge as well I should have mentioned this before but here's the the application gun it squeezes out both sides of the cartridge at the same time in this case this is not epoxy but expanding polyurethane which is exactly what you want for something like this because unlike epoxy polyurethane loves moisture it actually works better when there's a little bit of moisture around and since we're dealing with a basement wall there's going to be a fairly high moisture content in the masonry so this is perfect and polyurethane also does something that epoxy doesn't do and that it expands in this case this particular formulation expands by 18 times so it should be more than capable of penetrating the whole width of the wall so step three and this is where the unique part of this campaign comes in here step three is involves the application of carbon fiber fabric this is extremely strong in tension so in tension I mean by pulling apart and you will see later in the video we're going to apply another kind of epoxy a bonding epoxy this time to the masonry and then we're gonna put some of this cloth over top and then saturate it with more of the same epoxy and let it cure now this as I said adds tremendous tensile strength to the crack so much so that I'm told anyway that the bond between the carbon fiber fabric and the masonry is actually stronger than the masonry itself when it's been applied to bear and that this is saturated with with the epoxy and the bond is complete and optimal the crack will not open up again if the foundation continues to move you're gonna get a new crack in a new place so this is really as strong as you can ask for so let's get started so now it's time to start with the step one its two-part caulking gun of sorts you can see the two the two passages are divided there and the mixing will occur because of the baffles in the nozzle so no exterior mixing is required it would be a lot easier for me to do this job with my simulated blocks horizontally but that really wouldn't be accurate so its vertical and it's just see there we go look at the colors coming through here you can you can see them getting mixed as they work their way along you know the main thing here is that I retain a passage I don't want to have that clogged up there's a little bit of oozing that has partially covered the hole so when I finish my work here I'm going to poke something through there to make sure that it's open its open now I just want to make sure it's fully open okay now this is not the field this the ceiling step this is not the filling step rather but I do need to cover I do need to fill that gap in some way just superficially though because the actual filling is going to happen later now normally if this was an actual basement wall and it wasn't perfectly bare concrete if it had some paint on it or some efflorescence or the concrete was spalling a little bit I would apply an abrasive a cup wheel of some kind and a grinder to get down to some bare some bare concrete so on we've got our cracks sealed our our injection ports are in place it's going to take six to eight hours for this to harden so this is not something you can do all in one day but just as a final step before I continue and just set it aside I'm going to make sure that we're open all the way in here that's pretty important because has to be open in order to inject there now later after injection I'm going to knock these ports off and we're going to remove everything that's on the surface because for step three we want full bonding to the actual masonry so when we're done step two we're going to grind so that all you see is the filler in the crack and then bare clean concrete on the other side ready for optimal bonding with the carbon fiber fabric so epoxy is one of those things that's messy to clean up and the dry cord people have these pearl mighty wipes here too they're supposed to take care of epoxy as well as adhesives resins and caulking so it doesn't smell too harsh I mean there's a little bit of an odor to it but it's played up quite a strong kind of textured thing too a little bit abrasive but there's definitely a solvent here so let's see how well it cleans up the epoxy well certainly better than regular paper channels that's for sure because of the solvent and I think the abrasive texture also works pretty well too so you might want to have a Kennedy's along well at this stage we're pretty much finished step one we've got the epoxy covering the crack before I go into the actual filling of the crack I want to point out a couple of things I've let this sit overnight it's it's rock hard now we could have done the filling four or five six hours after application the purpose of this is to stop the filler from losing out these ports here need of course to be open all the way into the crack like this is it's possible for epoxy to cover that hole up these are clear but if they weren't I could just drill them out there wouldn't be much to drill through just a little bloop of epoxy that's hardened there now if you're concerned about lining these ports up with the crack once you can't see the crack because all this stuff is on there's a tip if you get a skewer like this or a toothpick or a popsicle stick and you jam it into the crack before you put the port on that will show you where the crack is because many times they can be erratic you don't really know exactly where they are so you can put that in that'll show you where it is and it'll also stop the port from slipping down before this has a chance to grab and start to firm up so that's the scoop for the injection ports so just before I I go on I want to show you an interesting thing I didn't use very much of this too maybe one third of it or so but because the mixing occurs in the novel I can take this off and the components are still separate so they're still they're still liquid I can use this again the nozzles toast of course is just rock solid right now but you can't use this for multiple applications as well so let me explain something else before I get to filling now normally this would be the inside of your basement this would be the outside there's soil here but in our simulation the crack is open at the back and I'm concerned that the filler will just ooze out here and not fill the space properly so I've used some hot melt glue to fasten that piece of wood we can pry it off later just to verify that the filler has in fact gone all the way through so I've got step two the two-part expanding polyurethane cartridge in the gun and now it's time to start injecting so I'm just gonna keep pumping slowly until we start seeing something coming up the other port and I can see we've got a bit of a leak there that's no matter though oh I can see it's starting to show through just starting to show through on the other port I'm gonna stop there on this bottom one now before I take it out I'm gonna get this plug ready because if I didn't put a plug in there we would lose a lot of a lot of the filler I would hear so relieve the pressure on the gun pop this in here there we go and now I'll continue my filling on the top but it has reached all the way up there which is it was a good thing now I would I would normally have another injection port further up the wall to see how far the fillers gotten up in that direction since I don't have that now I think I'm just gonna give it another couple of shots pop in another cap so I'll let this cure and then we'll come back and take a look and see how well it filled the injection has the fully cured a couple of things surprised me when there's a lot of expansion power here I mean it came the the filler polyurethane foam came out of a little gap there that I didn't know existed I was concerned or wondering whether it would fill the whole gap but we don't need to take off this strip to know that it got to the end in fact I probably could have put in about half as much as I did because I ended up scraping off a bunch of the foam here but we're ready for the next step and that would involve knocking these off knocking these things off and finishing the surface bringing this back to bare concrete so let's just see what happens here when I okay now I'm going to be going at this with different abrasive tools I'm gonna do it outside because they don't want to fill the shop with all kinds of dust and things from this but let's go ahead and clean this up get ready for step 3 which is the application of the carbon fiber fabric embedded in an epoxy adhesive so I think this turned out rather well don't you I've removed the epoxy sealer on the surface and I'm down to bare masonry and that is so I can properly adhere the carbon fiber cloth it's got the epoxy that secures it needs to be able to soak in to bare porous masonry like this and that's what we've got now this third step the carbon fiber step is not strictly speaking it's not absolutely necessary but it really does add a lot of tensile strength to the repair now this is a cup wheel this is the tool that I used to create this surface it's a diamond wheel it's especially meant for surfacing concrete and it just goes in a regular grinder like this so let's get some of that carbon fiber on right now so this is the step three epoxy and I'm going to be just applying it to the surface here this is not sufficient on its own just to squirt it out like this I'm going to be using that little roller just spread it around I want a nice nice coat in order to be strong enough this is supposed to extend about seven inches from the center of the crack so that means where we're dealing with a fourteen inch wide piece here that's the way it comes on the roll that's nestling in there nicely rollers a big help here you wouldn't want to try this without a roller now the carbon fiber is on there but I want to make sure it's fully encased as it should be so I'm going to put on another coat here so we'll let that harden we'll come back and see how it looks well as you can see I've taken the clamps off the blocks are holding together quite well I'd be surprised if the results were any different this is the kind of thing that I cover my online basement finishing course so if you're a homeowner and you want to hire a contractor intelligently or if you actually want to do the complete finishing work yourself check out the course I can save you a lot of trouble and a lot of hassles I hope you've enjoyed this and drop by and see me again sometime

Channel: Bailey Line Road

Views: 113,581

Rating: 4.8200002 out of 5

Keywords: fix a crack in a concrete foundation, how to fix a crack in concrete foundation, how to repair cracked concrete foundation, concrete foundation crack, foundation crack repair, how to fix cracked foundation, concrete foundation repair, foundation repair, fix a foundation crack, fix cracked concrete, concrete crack repair, concrete crack repair epoxy, epoxy concrete repair, filling cracks in concrete, sealing cracks in concrete, crack foundation repair, fill holes in concrete

Id: VUm-ylcWymA

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020