Welcome back to the series, this is part 4 and today i'll be repairing my own garage floor.
So to get started, if you haven't already seen the previous videos of the series
I urge you to do so, these steps can't be neglected if you want your epoxy
not to lift and last for a long time.
The materials and tools you'll be needing will depend on your type of repair.
I'll need to cut the perimeter of my repair area about a 1/4" deep so
I'll need a grinder and a dry cut diamond blade like this one.
Whenever cutting into concrete, you'll want to have some sort of dust
extraction like a shop vac. Another tool you'll be needing is a drill with a
mixing paddle. If you don't have these tools, you can very well use a recipient
and mix everything by hand.
an electric breaker or pneumatic hammer and other miscellaneous tools i'll be
showing during the video.
So the first thing I did was to outline the areas I need to cut a 1/4" deep around the perimeter
I then went ahead and made the cuts and chipped away using my electric chipper
all the bad pitted concrete.
You'll notice after a while that you're chipping bit might become dull and not
work as well, so what I did is took a grinder with a grinding disk and lightly
gave it back its convex edge. Don't over heat the steel as to not temperate it.
you should be left with a nice sharp end like this afterwards. With all the bad
concrete removed use a shop vac or blower to get all the dust and debris
out and away from the repair area. The ciment mix i'll be using is called
SIKATOP 122 PLUS. SIKA is known for making excellent quality products so I chose to
go with them for this project.
The 122 comes with a corrosion inhibitor which helps prevent corrosion if using
rebar in your fix.
I don't really need it since i'm not installing any rebar but i'll use it
anyways just to be safe. When you're ready to pour your mix,
you'll need to wet your repair area. The reason for this, is that concrete is like
a sponge,
if you leave your area to be repaired dry when pouring, it'll want to draw in
the water from your mix,
consequently changing its content radio.
Once dampened, you're ready to pour your mix. I used a 10" trowel to disperse the
mix equally throughout the area and finish it off with a straight edge.
I used a scrap piece of Russian plywood I had laying around.
this gave me a nice uniform finish. You could remove all the excess ciment before it
hardens to have less grinding to do later on down the road or you can just
skip this step if you prefer. I then waited for the mix to harden just enough
so it's still malleable and used a damp sponge to smooth out any imperfections.
During the curing process, putting some plastic wrap or vapor barrier over the
repair will help keep the moisture content from escaping too quickly.
If you skip this step, your newly poured concrete will dry too fast and you'll
end up with a cracked floor. With that aside, we can move on to fixing the cracks.
The idea behind fixing these is to remove any loose or fragile concrete
that can compromise the repair. The general rule of thumb that I go by is if
you strike it with a hammer and it breaks it's because it wasn't meant to
stay there in the first place.
You'll end up with a crack that's bigger than when you started and that's exactly what you want.
What you'll need to fill these gaps with is a caulking gun, some kiln-dried silica sand,
a spatula and some two-part epoxy. As hard as epoxy is when cured, it's also
flexible which is perfect for this kind of fix.
So the first thing to getting this done is to put some sand at the bottom of the
crack as to not waste any epoxy. Without any sand, the epoxy will just flow down into the ground
The goal here is to create a paste. I used an approximate 50/50 ratio to achieve
this and got some great results. When all your repairs are done,
I suggest waiting at least 24 hours for them to cure before sanding them down.
You'll be left with a smooth, strong finish ready to get painted. The last
thing I did was to install some foam insulation on each side of my slab to
prevent bugs from getting in and summer and cold air from getting in winter.
That complete's part 4 of the series, all that's left to do is to paint your slab
with your favorite color epoxy paint, i'll cover this in part 5.
until the next video keep building !