Concrete Crack & Floor Repair in Reading, PA

Concrete crack & floor repair is part of almost every floor we coat in Reading, and sometimes it is the whole job. The city's housing is old, with a median build year of 1938 according to Point2Homes' summary of Census data, and many garage and basement slabs carry decades of cracks, patches, pits and wear. A coating will show every one of those flaws, and an unrepaired crack can telegraph through a new floor within a season.

Why slabs crack around here

• Age and shrinkage: older concrete develops shrinkage cracks, and decades of use widen them.
• Freeze-thaw: with January lows averaging 23°F, water in cracks near garage doors freezes and opens them further.
• Salt damage: road salt carried into garages causes scaling, pitting and spalls near the door.
• Ground movement: parts of Berks County sit on limestone. Sinking Spring, for example, is described on Wikipedia as having underground streams that carve the limestone and form sinkholes. Settling ground can crack slabs.
• Old plumbing work: trenches cut and refilled in basements often settle or crack along the edges.

Stable cracks and moving cracks

Not every crack is the same. A hairline shrinkage crack that has not changed in years is stable and can be filled and coated. A crack that is getting wider, has one side higher than the other, or keeps reopening after it is patched is moving. Filling a moving crack with rigid material does not stop the movement. We look at each crack and tell you which kind it is. If we think the slab or foundation needs a structural evaluation, we say so. Bob Vila lists foundation repair at about $2,200 to $7,800 when cracks come from foundation problems, which is a different job from floor repair.

What repair includes

We open stable cracks with a grinder so the filler bonds deep, then fill with an epoxy or polyurea crack filler and grind it flush. Spalls and pits are cleaned out and patched with a repair mortar. Control joints can be filled for a smooth look or kept open and re-cut after coating. Worn or uneven floors can be resurfaced with a thin polymer-modified overlay that gives a new surface to coat.

Repair as a stand-alone job

Some owners just want a floor fixed and left uncoated. That is common with landlords and with older shops. We can repair cracks, patch spalls and resurface worn areas without a coating, and you can decide later whether to seal or coat the floor. If you do plan to coat, doing the repairs and coating in one project is usually cheaper because the floor is ground only once.

When repair is not enough

If a slab has heaved, sunk, or is broken into loose sections, patching will not hold. A floor over an active sinkhole or a drainage problem needs that fixed at the source. We will tell you honestly when a slab needs replacement or a structural repair before a coating makes sense.