How to Repair Broken Concrete Stairs - Quick and Easy

in this video i'm going to show you how to fix these stairs and we're going to do it right now [Music] okay so these are my back stairs and what i have going on here is a mess so this stuff i'm guessing what happened was this was patched at one time and um what happens is if it's not done properly the patch starts coming away and we have winters here where ice will melt water gets down behind this it'll freeze and it'll push the patch out like that um so i think that's what happened here so i have a little spot right here too where this is just falling apart too so this is what i'm going to use some quick setting cement even says right there repair broken corners and edges and this stuff is cool because you can actually mold it where um in a lot of cases you would do a form which is you know some uh two by sixes or two by eights that go like this and then you would mix this up loose and pour it but instead this stuff you can just mix it and kind of shove it in there and mold it so i'm going to show you how to do that so here we go the first step is clean out all of this stuff that's just not very well attached anymore and you want to get all this out it looks like sand just remove any loose particles and i'm going to grab a chisel and a hammer and try and get some of this stuff off just all the loose stuff so that's my first step just want to make sure anything you attach to is solid so go ahead and like poke around like this i'm gonna have to vacuum all that sand out of there it might seem solid but if it has cracks in it it's probably on its way out this is called a cold chisel you don't want to use a wood chisel or a chisel for wood this is actually for masonry and at some point i'll take care of this not just yet so i'm just going to try and clean this up with a wire brush get all the loose sand out of this concrete now just to add a little strength to this i'm going to use these tap cons which are concrete screws basically and i'm going to drill some holes and attach them in here at random points uh and that is gonna be another thing for the concrete to wrap around and hold into place almost like these are gonna be like little pieces of rebar basically if you know what those are the metal pieces in concrete that make it stronger so i'm just going to put these in a couple places so that cement will hold on to those and just create a stronger bond [Music] [Music] so just want to make sure those are passed they're not sticking out cool do a couple more [Music] [Music] now i'm going to take a sponge i'm going to wet this down and clean up any dust that's left over and let that dry for a little bit okay so when it comes to mixing this stuff uh they do have a what's called an acrylic fortifier it's a liquid that you that you pour in um and it strengthens strengthens the concrete it's recommended to use with concrete or cement that's going to be over an inch so i could use that but i'm just going to use water because i'm going to use this stuff and they don't recommend using both of those together this is a concrete bonding adhesive and basically you take this and you brush it up against the old concrete and the new cement will stick to that it'll help it'll help it stick and since that's the issue that i was having was this was not sticking to the old concrete um i'm gonna try everything i can to make that happen by way of these tap cons and this adhesive and i'll just skip the fortifier i'm gonna take this adhesive and i have an old brush here that i don't really care about and then i'm just gonna brush it right on that old concrete including up here where this new cement is going to touch and around those tapcons i'm just gonna spread it out over the whole thing now five to ten minutes i'll let that dry and as soon as it's dry i wanna start filling that in with my cement okay that's almost dry so i'm going to start mixing up my cement and everything about this is going to be quick so you're going to mix it quickly you have to use it quickly because it dries quickly so i have a bucket i'm going to use this bucket i have my water i have a trowel and i'm going to dump some of this in some water in and mix it up you don't want to mix more than you're actually going to use so let's let's mix it up the trick is getting the right consistency and making making sure there's no clumps everything's mixed well okay that is a pretty good consistency it's a little more loose than i would like it to be but that's going to dry up real quick so let's start filling that in we got some gloves and start loading this up so what you're going to want to do is kind of layer this stuff just make sure you're pushing it in there there's no air pockets or anything this stuff is gonna dry probably five to ten minutes it'll start to it'll start to dry up and you can shape it you just wanna get all the big spots right now and it's not going to be perfect against the asphalt we'll have to figure out what to do with that after now the trick on the corners is to load it up more than where the actual corner is going to be and then you can shape it as it dries that's looking pretty good looks pretty straight on both edges now you'll notice that there's kind of a strange profile right here so what i'm going to do is just try and match it my best and just take my finger and kind of make it so it's not uh completely like a sharp edge you can see i could do like a little edge right here i'm sure there's a tool that can do that but i'm gonna do it with my finger and it doesn't have to be perfect we just want to make it look similar the profile match is pretty good like i said it's not perfect but neither are these stairs so you just got to do what works for you and then you can take a sponge and kind of feather the edges once it's dry enough and you can take and the whole thing just kind of give it a a texture just like the other concrete very carefully make sure it's dry enough i'm gonna say that looks pretty good edges are all nice and feathered in this profile looks pretty good round this edge over a little bit make it match that's feathered in yeah that looks good now i'm gonna do the same thing for that one that one should be easier because it's not on the corner just make it nice and straight and finish it with a sponge all set i think that looks way better than it did so if it was really hot you know 80 90 degrees i would try and keep this wet i would spray it with some water put some plastic over it so it would cure properly but it is perfect temperature right now about 65 70 degrees so i'm just gonna let it cure and that's it repair done so i hope you enjoyed this video and i hope it helped you out if you want to see more videos like this you can click hereish and hereish and check those out and if you haven't subscribed yet please do got a ton of more home repair stuff like this on the way so thanks for watching

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 2,594,461

Keywords: concrete stair repair, concrete, concrete step repair, concrete repair, concrete steps, how to repair concrete steps, concrete stairs, diy, cement step repair, repair, fix, construction, concrete patch, concrete fix, stair repair, quikrete, step repair, repair concrete steps, rapid set, diy concrete step repair, patch concrete steps, cement step patch, cement steps, concrete step fix, fixing steps, the fixer, how to fix concrete stairs no form, quikcrete quick-setting cement

Id: srX0c1saT_g

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021