Floor Masters have been fixing concrete surfaces since 2000, and concrete crack repair is a big part of that. Concrete guys have a saying
There are 2 guarantees with a concrete slab, It will go hard andIt will crack. and the other day I heard another line to the saying – if it doesn’t we will replace it.
- Using a tooled joint, where the cement is compressed into a V shape with a trowel and induces a crack whilst wet, is effective in keeping cracks at bay in heavy-duty areas such as long, narrow driveways or internal corners. Specially designed crack inducers can also be used in high-risk areas. Use the largest aggregate concrete size available.
- The ARDEX Concrete Crack Repair & Injection Range uses a high strength, rapid setting two-part system to repair concrete damage from hairline cracks right through to structural repairs. These products are ideal for repairing holes, spalls and cracks in concrete, in internal as well as external situations where heavy duty vehicle traffic is anticipated.
THE JOINT FREE SLAB CRACK INDUCER GRID The crack inducer grid used in New Zealand is a one metre square grid comprising extruded plastic tubes and plastic four-way junctions. The plastic tubes are supplied cut to length for the one metre square grid, and the grid is assembled on site with the tubes fitting snugly onto the junctions.
It’s easy to see that concrete is a fundamental building block in the construction of almost every building and in many landscapes. Concrete is cost effective and durable. It is also worth noting that a crack in concrete does not need to be a big concern, and we can repair cracks in your concrete.
Concrete cracks for many reasons –
Shrinkage is the common – many people do not know that concrete shrinks as it cures, as the water evaporates the particles consolidate. The larger the slab, the greater the shrinkage. This can be evident in two ways – lots of “micro cracking” (very fine cracks) or larger cracks.
Settling cracks – you have just put a heavy slab on the ground and sometimes the ground will compress more in some areas than others. This can often result in the crack being higher on one side than the other, or in extreme cases, changing angles (i.e it sinks at one end).
Substrate movement – in areas with lots of clay in the ground, clay will swell with moisture and shrink when it dries out. These cracks often open and close with different weather cycles.
Subsidence – Where the ground moves or sinks and puts stress on the concrete. Slabs can sink or pull apart.
Concrete Slab Crack Control Joints
Understanding concrete crack repair
Concrete Slab Crack Inducer Nzd
It is important to understand that a crack in concrete often goes right through the slab, and it can branch out as it goes down. The best concrete crack repair resin is thin, and able to follow the crack in the concrete deeper and make a stronger repair. We use Fast Fix, a hybrid polyurea concrete crack repair resin we import from the USA. Fast Fix is great for crack repair because it is water thin and able to really get down into the crack and “weld” it back together. It is also to follow the branches of the crack and repair the surrounding fractures.
Concrete Slab Crack Inducer
Another bonus of the Fast Fix concrete crack repair resin, is that it cure quickly and we can allow traffic across the floor, or continue with additional floor repairs of coatings in as little as 15 minutes.