How to Fix Crumbling Concrete/Cement Steps

hey guys this is Emily Lopez and today I am doing a repair on some crumbling concrete steps um ultimately there's going to be some sound things I can't control because I am outside so I apologize if there's cars driving by and a little bit of ambient noise that's out of our control so um I had posted that I had done a couple of these and a couple of you had messaged me and asked how I did the repair so um I had originally thought oh this isn't something that I probably should do a video about but you guys asked for so I'm gonna do a video so real quick guys first things first my mom told me that my aunt Debbie and I have tonight Debbie's watches all of my YouTube videos so I wanted to say hi Aunt Debbie thank you for watching I am going to start by explaining to you what I've done so far so if you look at these steps um these two I used a mortar mix on a quick set mortar mix and then this one I used a concrete mix and what the difference was is the mortar mix is going to be a lot finer it's going to be more like Sans and smaller particulate where you have the concrete mix here this one doesn't look as good there were bigger chunks and bigger rocks so it was hard to get a smoother finish on the smaller thinner sections this mortar mix we should be able to go down to half an inch thickness and be able to get a good Bond and smooth it out so that's the difference in those top two looking a little bit better than that bottom one or this one not looking as good now I have two more steps to go so I'll show you how I'm going to do those the what what was destroying these steps for us is first of all they're just old this is an old um probably an old pore this is a little concrete and then second of all Wyoming Winters are gnarly and we a lot of times use salt for safety especially on steps if it's a rental or you have a commercial space you um you can't have it be hazardous so as much as I know salt destroys concrete we also had to use something to keep these steps safe so when I start repairing concrete steps the first thing I'm going to take into mind is you don't want anything loose so anything that is going to break off concrete is not going to attach to because it's just going to flick off right it's like if you paint over peeling paint it's just going to come back off you have to get all the loose stuff so what I like to do is start with a wire brush and break off everything that's loose and you kind of have a loose piece that you can't get with the wire brush if you have to use a little Hammer a little chisel get off everything that's loose before you get started okay now because I am using a quick set material I am going to do one step at a time this is going to set up much faster than normal concrete and um or mortar or cement and that's the reason we're using this mix because we need somebody to be able to walk on the step later today normal concrete mix you would set a frame you would pour your concrete you would set it all up you'd follow your process and then I'd probably come back and pull that frame later in this case I'm going to do a just a small board with my framing I'm going to do the top I'm going to let it set up a little bit and then I'm going to pull that that board away and then smooth the side actually pretty quickly this step I left the frame on too long and when I went to pull it off it pulled off part of the step with me and I had to report and reframe it out so we're going to work quicker than you normally would with normal concrete now I am going to use a couple tools that you'll see in this video but ultimately you really could do this with a very few hand tools if you didn't have these so um let me show you what I'm going to use now the first thing I'll tell you guys is um and there's a lot of things that I'm really proficient in concrete I have no formal training I'm just a DIY or on concrete so to take this with a grain of salt this is definitely a DIY this is not going to be a forever solution but it should hold up for I did one of these on a property like six years ago and it's still holding up so it should hold up a decent amount of time but this isn't probably your Forever solution like doing a report now um what I'm gonna do is I have a high speed mixer because I'm actually mixing a relatively small amount of this so I'm going to mix with that but really you could just mix it with a trowel if this is all you had you could do this whole project with the trowel and a bucket it would just take you a little bit longer and you might be a little bit sore for mixing the next day but I'm going to mix with a high speed mixer and then I have some but wood float I have a magnesium float and then I just have a point trowel but really it's just that smooth metal finishing edge instead of like a concrete metal finisher and then I have a edger but you really could do this by hand by forming that corner over if you had to so really this in a bucket in water is all you have to have so don't feel like you have to go buy all these things if you're just doing a project and you don't think you're going to do this again I do think a sponge this is just like a tiling I zoom these when I tile they're probably in your tile section at Home Depot and I think they have them in the concrete section this is helpful for smoothing so the big thing is you want to make sure that it's clean that there's no debris and then there's actually primer a bonding primer you can put on for your new and old concrete bond together better but different products um some go together and some don't so make sure you read that you're not using two conflicting products the other thing that I see some people do when they do this they actually take like tapcon screws that are made for concrete and they drill them in a couple spots to help join the pieces together um and then it kind of gives you a grab almost like when you're doing a normal pour and you use rebar however I have not done that many times and it's been fine without that so I am not going to drill screws into it but I am going to use a bonding primer on here um before I start so I'm gonna go get that and put that on here and let that start setting up so a lot of people paint this on I was lazy I just poured it on because I don't have a paintbrush with me I'm gonna let that set up a little bit depending on the project you use it might want it wet it might want to dry just make sure you're following that recommendation so um if you're using that bonding primer I'm just gonna put this is cut to the right side of the goodies and because I'm doing these one at a time I'm just working my way down so I don't have to you know if I put something down onto the under them yet and then I just have some blocks I'm gonna put up against this to hold it in place while I do the top four [Music] that's the stuff we're working on our board and then I just have blocks holding it that are easier for me to pull when I'm ready to finish the front side so that's our setup that's it now before I start mixing I like to have everything ready because this is not like normal concrete when I'm using this is a quick set material let me show you the product I'm using this is rapid set mortar mix from Home Depot if you're using a mixing drill I have my mixing again I have my water so I can get the amount of water if you are not familiar with mixing like mortar or concrete I think we all have a consistency we like so I'm not going to use measurements I just kind of have a texture I want it to be if you're unsure there's instructions for ratios on the back of the bag just follow those if you're not familiar or comfortable kind of guessing the consistency you want so I like to start by putting some water in the bottom so I don't have like clods of dried material that I'm fighting against so I start with some water that I'll put in my mix and then I'll put more water in if I need to wear a mask when you ask when you're Mixing concrete I don't have one so I'm not going to but you should wear one and again if you don't have a hand mixer like a power mixer you can use a trowel I would just do smaller batches because it will be easier for you to work through it if you're doing it I like to make a little bit more than I think I need and then you just gotta dump out what you don't use because it will set up in your bucket fast but if you're a little bit stressed because you're new to this and you don't have enough and you don't have a Helper and you have to mix it real quick you're gonna start panicking and then that never makes your project go well okay and just for you guys to see the consistency I've mixed it too that's what I'm happy with to work with it gives me some time you might adjust for your prefer preference Cameron try to give you a side view so hopefully I'm not blocking too much of what I'm doing because I have this flexible bucket if I mixed it light enough I can start by pouring it in because I did a small amount if not you can just trowel it in depending on what you mix it so get it in there and then I try to really drive it in my trowel just so it's deep in that edge because you don't want a bunch of air pockets and Bubbles we're really trying to drive it into those voids deep so I don't have any Hollow spots just trying to push it in push it deep [Music] down into that Groove because that's where it's going to be in it it's thinnest spot pushing pushing it in okay then what I like to do now if you're not going to use what's left in your bucket relatively quickly you need to dump that out or it's going to set your bucket really fast so be mindful of them I like to keep a little bit so if I need to touch anything up on my front piece I can but if you're not going to be quick just mix more later um okay so then I like to take something and hit around my frame so check out any air bubbles if you have something like an orbital sander or something that vibrates or bounces you could kind of put that on the side of this just to shake it down that will really help get your bubbles out I'm just going to hit it a bunch I've been doing that and it's been working okay for just a small project like this [Music] all right that's a little bit better so I'm gonna actually try to just do all the finishing with my seven inch Point Trail just to show you that you can do it with one thing um and my sponge I'm still gonna use my sponge um concrete and mortar are the perfect balance of treating it right and not touching it too much so um you see me kind of work it down hit the edges to try to get the bubbles out and then what I'm gonna do is I just want to kind of be smoothing the top and so I'm just going to push firmly and just kind of shovel shift back and forth yeah and just start kind of working that surface yeah and you know if you mess it up anything can be fixed you could always pour over it it'll cut a piece out pour over it you can fix anything so don't freak out if you're trying something if you find a loose spot just grab some of your extra mortar like or some of the stuff that falls down just just put it in that spot and just kind of see how you just kind of flatten it out and work it in so you can always take some out if you have too much you can always add some in if you need to add a little bit more to a certain spot well to a certain point right now we can now I'm gonna leave alone for a minute I'm gonna rinse off my tools so they don't get dry I'm gonna throw away what's in my bucket so it doesn't set up unless you have another place you're going to and then you can put it on there but if you don't it's gonna set up how fast so get it out of your bucket or it's gonna set up in there I might try to patch a little bit of it on here just because I know I'm doing this one next so I don't waste it but I'm gonna leave that alone and let it set all right now I'm just going to come back to it and I'm just going to fill it with my trowel and see how I'm feeling about the consistency so it's getting firmer but it's still moving quite a bit now I have to remind myself if this if you're using normal concrete mix or normal mortar mix not a quick set you're probably not going to want to pull this yet but like I said there was one time that I waited too long and then when I cut it I had to like cut in with my trowel to like break it apart and then smooth it out and fix it so this is meant to be able to be applied like upright and vertical um there's a you should be able to do it overhead if you make it thick enough like I I smashed this down here like my extra and it's holding on and so um it should have some holding power but if it's too wet it will just dump out so I think I'm getting close to the point where I do want to pull my board away um because you're going to get some suction between your concrete and your board and you don't want to leave it too long so I'm actually going to move my blocks and just kind of do a tight a tender little pull and see if I want to pull it away or if no I'm not quite ready so we're going to do an investigation and honestly if you mess up and you pull it off you can just start again everything is fixable thank you hey my mommy's here okay so I can see hold on just a sec so I can see that it's pulling like when I go to pull it wants to take that so I'm going to take my little trowel and I'm going to kind of separate I'm creating some separation here and I have it smooth up against my wood so I'm not gouging into the back side of the concrete or the mortar okay see look now I can smooth this out and make it prettier if I would have waited too long it would have gotten hard to see how I had to create that separation but I can smooth this and then I'm going to leave it again and then I can do more smoothing once it's a little stronger you can kind of see your weak spots where it bows so you don't want to mess with it too much let it get strong come back to it make it pretty and make your adjustments so right now I kind of have a bow here I'm going to work my way up work my way up a little bit at a time but only every once in a while because I don't want to mess with it too much all right so again a little bit of time now I'm just coming back to it and just working this up because it's trying to slump forward a little bit I'm getting a bit of a lip up there but I'll smooth that out later so you can kind of see as I'm working this up I'm getting that divot because of the swamp that it's trying to do which that's okay and I could have filled that in later but I have some excess up here I can work that in I'm trying to just smooth the top not push too far down because I'm still working against that gravity a little bit five minutes later and I want to make sure you notice that I did this step with just this and this so if this is all you have you can make it work okay so there you have our repaired stairs um if this video has been valuable at all to you I would greatly appreciate if you would hit that subscribe button like this video and even leave a comment [Music]

Channel: Emily Lopez

Views: 78,527

Keywords: Emily Lopez, home maintenance, home repair, you can diy, concrete steps, cement steps, broken concrete, broken concrete steps, diy, diy home, construction, remodel, renovation, real estate investing, house flipping, rental property, rental property investing, rental property investor, Wyoming real estate, Wyoming, concrete stairs, step repair, stair repair, mortar, concrete, cement, rapid set concrete, rapid set mortar, making money, saving money, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship

Id: JOXBBujIIYM

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023