Concrete Repair

Concrete is often used as a term to describe solid and sturdy ideas and objects. Yet, sometimes concrete does not live up to its reputation. In fact, cracks in concrete are not uncommon. Fortunately, you can repair these cracks on your own with relative ease.

The type of concrete repair process you use depends on the size of the crack, but is very similar either way. For either project, you will need a trowel and a chisel. For small projects you will need a vinyl reinforced patching compound and a bonding adhesive and for a large project you will need sand and some concrete mix.

Before you start your concrete repair, you will need to transform the crack into the right shape. This is down by chiseling the crack edges in a certain way. In fact, imagine chiseling the crack to a v shape. This is the opposite of what we want to do. We want the v to be upside down so that the opening of the hole is smaller than the base of the hole.

The smaller cracks will now be ready for the bonding adhesive. This is painted on with a brush. This step will help form a bond between the old and new materials used for the concrete repair. The concrete patching compound is than smoothed into the crack with the trowel.

For a larger crack the process is very similar. However, no bonding adhesive is used and the crack is filled partway with sand. In fact, for proper concrete repair the sand should go to about a half of an inch from the opening. It is then time to use the concrete mix in the same way that we used the patching compound. We want to smooth it over with the trowel to make sure that it is level with the original surface.