How To Permanently Repair A Garage Floor Crack

how's it going you guys it's Scott with everyday home repairs today I want to show you how to properly repair cracks in your garage floor like this monster one that I have here now whether you're prepping for an epoxy floor with the flake finish like I am or you just want to repair that crack so you don't have that unsightly crack all the way through your garage floor this fix will fit both of those needs now as you can see I have some type of sealant or DIY repair that was done years ago so I need to remove that first and then we'll start prepping the crack and then filling it with product prior to our final step which will be grinding everything smooth so let's jump into it now if you have a bunch of material like I have where there's old sealant or something within the crack I recommend just doing a first round with a floor scraper like this because you can get quite a bit of the material out already without going into grinding which you might run through a lot of different discs when you're grinding because it's going to gum up those discs with all that materal material so I just take kind of the edge of the scraper go along the crack and try to get some of the bulk material up and you can see it is even pulling that sealant out of the crack as we go along now if you just have bare concrete you don't have any paint or you don't have any product like this that you're cleaning up you can skip this step and even the next step where we then will jump in prepping the actual crack itself and then between each step I do like to kind of clean up to keep the material away from the crack so once we're ready to put down the product we don't have a ton of cleaning to do so scraping was able to remove quite a bit of material which really saves us on this next step where we're going to break out a grinder this is just a 4 and 1/2 in maybe have a 4 in grinder and what I'm going to use is a abrasive wheel here that I got from Harbor Freight but you will see a link in the description right below the video that will take you over to my Amazon store to connect you with all these different products that you might not have and need to get for this project some of these specialty grinding discs and other products we'll use are really hard to pick up at your home improvement store so you do have to get them online or maybe have let's say a Harbor Freight in your area and then don't forget respirator and goggles or at least some safety glasses once we get into these stages of grinding because there's going to be a lot of material in the air so I'll start off right at the garage door I'm just going to clean off here what would be the threshold or the approach to the the garage floor there's actually no cut separation or no expansion joint between the driveway itself and the garage floor which is not good so that crack carries all the way through in the future I will be doing a cut line there and then repouring the driveway so you'll take your time and it is going to take a little time to clean all of this off let the grinder do most of the work and of course you need your respirator on for this now I like this abrasive disc when you have something like this where you're getting pain paint or some type of sealant off the floor maybe you have a hairline crack and you just want to clean things up which I did I have this hairline crack coming off the side which really has very little separation but I will still want to fill things in just so we're ready for the final epoxy flooring later on on a future video but if you do have a little bit of unevenness you want to step up to something like this where you have a diamond cup wheel and that's going to grind and clean at the same time now that dust shroud will also come in very handy where you can run your vacuum into it and try to do a little dust control because as you're grinding off that surface and grinding off all that material it's going to kick up a ton of dust so here is what the finished product looks like ground down and what you're looking at is that you can swipe your hand across it you don't feel that lip it's smooth from side to side and then before the last round of grinding I just take an old Flathead maybe have an old chisel whatever you want to use and I'm just going to clean out this crack and sometimes you'll get here I just have the sealant that I'm pulling out but you'll also get loose chunks of concrete that you'll have to dig out next up we are going to be cleaning this entire crack with two different types of grinding wheels But first you can just pull out what whatever you can by hand and then you'll just have less stuff flying around as we run the last grinding wheel along the cracks length and then two blades I'll use for the small thin hairline cracks I'll just use this thin Diamond blade but for our main crack the much larger crack I would use this V Notch and it's called a Chase because you're going to chase it along that crack opening things up so here is the thinner one running right along the hairline crack you'll take your time and you do not want to apply much down pressure or that blade will cut right in and go deep into your concrete you're just going to follow any of those hairline cracks and open them up just a little bit and that's going to help this liquid that we set down here the epoxy set down in the crack and then make a nice finished surface once we grind that down just take your time following through and then for the larger crack here that vnch wheel you'll just ride it along within the crack and that's going to take any of the loose thin edges off and it's going to kind of cut each side back a little bit again you're just going to chase that crack all the way through and you do need all your personal protective equipment here especially your respirator we'll do r one round of cleaning up getting all that dust and debris out and then it's a good idea to use your shop back and just suck anything out of the crack before we put down a very fine sand to serve as a base all right so now we're ready to actually start building back up and what I'm going to be using is a twart fastet epoxy from concrete floor Solutions these guys are the best in the business they've been doing it for multiple decades and I actually found multiple YouTube videos of them doing this type of repair and also epoxy coatings with the flake finish years ago and I just kind of tracked them over time and I really loved that they had their own products that they use for those actual jobs so I reached out to Jason at concrete floor Solutions and I said hey I got a crack here that I want to repair can you send over some of the facet epoxy so I can put it to the test now they have the gallon or two gallon size so depending on how much cracks you have to fill you're going to have to size that correctly you can Baseline it off of what I have I have a 24t long crack and it's about4 to a half of inch all the way down with some spots even as large as 1 in so we'll see if this one gown will make it all the way but I do have some extra if I need it also they have an ultra fine sand which I'm just going to go ahead and apply with a cut off water bottle pretty fancy but this is what's going to give you your foundation your base where you're going to fill that up within an eighth of an inch of the concrete the top of the concrete and then you're going to put that epoxy thin coat of epoxy and overfill that because then you'll grind everything off once it's set up now this is fast set you have only about 45 seconds of working time so you want to use something like a ketchup bottle and I've marked 100 mlit and 200 mL I'll fill the part A to 100 I'll fill the part B to 200 with some gloves on I'll go ahead and shake that 10 times and then I'll just apply it right to the crack with a little bit of an overfill again 45 seconds working time and then about 20 minutes for it to fully set up where then you can grind that down smooth and that's one of the big benefits the epoxy is going to adhere to the concrete pretty much the best out of any product that you can put in a crack like this and also you can work that and grind it back down less than a half hour so you can really make a lot of progress through projects like this so if this type of product will work for you guys you can look right below the video in the description there will be a link over to the store and again they have the one gallon size and the two gallon size and if you want the ultra fine s sand you can can set that there and then at checkout use the promo code and just enter an eh10 and you'll get a 10% discount on this fast set epoxy or any other products that you buy in their store all right so now let's go ahead and fill everything with sand up to8 of an inch and then we'll start laying down the epoxy now remember this is the specific ultra fine sand do not go out and just pick up some play sand like you've seen me use on some of the exterior cracks we're filling with like a tremco Vulcan SSL no that's not what we're doing here we need complete dry crack here completely dry sand or that fast setting epoxy could have some issues where it'll Bubble Up and you w won't get the finished product you're looking for so just go ahead and keep sprinkling that into the crack making sure that all the voids get filled and you'll want even after you go all the way down the crack you'll want to go back through because sometimes you'll have a void kind of open up and pull in some additional sand so you just want to double check so now part A I'm doing 100 m getting a little messy there so I'll wipe it out before I add Part B so we don't get things jelling up on the outside of the ketchup bottle then we'll shake it up and start to apply that within the crack now remember we got about 45 seconds to work with this material for every batch that's why we don't mix up too much and as you apply this in it will soak into the sand so you'll have to kind of go back multiple times to make sure we overfill that crack so when we grind it down we can grind it down to a smooth surface this is not a cosmetic repair we want a smooth surface so we can do epoxy finish on top of it and then here's a little bit different close-up view and you'll see if you look as the epoxy goes in it will start to soak into that sand and then pull down into the crack so that's why you're going to need to go over multiple times and check different section sections of the floor because if your floor isn't completely level the epoxy the fast setting epoxy will also try to pull in low ends so it can be a little bit tricky but just take your time and you should be able to get the finished product you're looking for so I'll keep progressing through this crack and then as I kind of reach the end here my end is going to be a little tricky because there's a threshold that we're going all the way out and it starts to slope down so I just kind of damned up some of the fine sand to stop the epoxy but that will be a little tricky to get the epoxy all filled up there because it will want to slope out and kind of pull up on that sand Dam that I've made but you can see me going back through looking for low spots filling that in with this new batch trying to get that up to the overfill so we can grind that back down and once we grind down we'll see what the finished product looks like and how successful we were with filling everything up now you watch it set up it's clear kind of have that dark tint now look right by the sand Dam there it'll start to set up and you'll see it's gray and cloudy that's when the epoxy starts to set up and starts to harden and then it only takes about 30 minutes for it to completely set up and then you can go right back to grinding remember we overfilled so now we're going to grind that down smooth which will make for a great base for epoxy coating to go on top of which is my plan for this garage floor I still have a ton more prep work to do but this is one of the major steps this is also valid for basement floors if you have a crack and you want to do some type of flooring and you want a really good repair to that crack this is about as good as you can find on the market now you have to grind that back smooth you're going to be a ton of dust remember have your respirator on to make sure you're not getting that dust in your lungs so take your time smooth everything back out and then you might have a few spots that are a little low I'll show you an example here but but overall I was pleasantly surprised on my finished product especially for my first attempt now here was my worst low spot not too bad I could actually grind down the concrete but you'll tell your low spots is you won't have the scuff marks when you're sanding right it's untouched noticing that okay this is lower than your overall concrete surface for me I have a few more cracks and some other prep work to do so I'm going to do another round of this fast set repair epoxy and I'll just fill this in when I do that and then we'll get that sanded off smooth so overall I'm very pleased with the end project and this was basically a day worth of work and then for your reference for this actual crack I only went through about a half gallon of the fast set epoxy remember there is a link in the description for the exact product that we're using and use eh10 for a 10% discount at checkout one of the things that really sets concrete floor Solutions out is you can talk to the guys that actually made the product and have applied the product for years and years and years so you can reach out to Jason and he's going to help you through your project and get you match with the right products that is extremely hard to find these days and I think it's a true differentiator of what they're doing as always let me know what you guys think down in the comments and if you want to see an exterior crack that I actually used a pool noodle to fix check out this video right here a year and a half later that fix is still going strong so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on that next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 1,070,198

Keywords: concrete crack repair, garage floor repair kit, basement floor crack repair, slab foundation crack repair, permanent concrete crack repair

Id: bXDYgxM-PTc

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2023