Q What can I do about cracks in my concrete basement floor? They’re about 2 mm wide and haven’t gotten worse during the decades we’ve been in the house.
Cracks like yours are stable and common in concrete basement floors, but there are reasons to fill them anyway. Besides making you feel more at ease, sealing can keep out radon gas and perhaps water leaks. The trick is sealing cracks so the repair lasts.
The approach I like best uses both an injection of liquid into the full depth of the crack, and a surface application of carbon fiber fabric on top. The best systems have more than enough injection pressure to fill a 2-mm crack with epoxy or polyurethane foam all the way through the thickness of the floor or walls. The thing about concrete is that it can shift, and even a little movement will re-open sealed cracks. This is where the carbon fiber fabric comes in.
Paint-like deck finishes are made for grey decks like yours, and though they’re not exactly like paint, they are opaque. This kind of product could be applied directly over what you have now with minimal prep. It would look nice and neat, but no wood grain would show through. Sand what you’ve got now lightly with an 80-grit abrasive in a random orbit sander to boost adhesion, blow the surface clean with a leaf blower, then apply an opaque deck stain.
Steve Maxwell finds that hand-pumped, ice-cold well water tastes best. Visit Steve online at BaileyLineRoad.com and sign up for his Saturday morning email newsletter.
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