It's common to find concrete as the primary construction material for roads, bridges and buildings. But just like any other construction material, concrete can suffer from cracks over time. Unrepaired cracks develop into large, risky crevices capable of causing structural failure.
Repairing a cracked concrete structure can be costly and time-consuming. For this reason, it's wise to adopt an ideal concrete repair strategy to save on time, money and energy while ensuring a long-lasting result. Continue reading for three essential crack repair methods before calling in your next concrete repair service.
Epoxy Crack Injection
This repair method is highly useful when dealing with relatively narrow cracks. It involves drilling venting ports along the lines at close intervals and injecting the epoxy under pressure to seal exposed cracks. But until you resolve the underlying problem leading to the cracks, they'll likely re-occur close to the initial damage.
Epoxy crack injection's efficiency is mostly affected by factors such as leakage and silt contamination. Thus, these two require fixing to allow for a long-lasting epoxy. This technique requires a professional crack repair service with the right skills, tools and experience to perform it.
On the contrary, epoxy injection is unsuitable for active and protracted cracks. Epoxy resins can quickly lose strength on direct exposure to extreme temperature, and as a result, fireproofing may be mandatory.
Sealing and Routing
This technique is common and the most straightforward method for concrete repair. Ideally, cracks are treated as joints. It involves increasing the size of concrete cracks on the surface, after which a joint sealant is applied.
However, it's imperative to adopt the correct width-to-depth ratio during the sealing process to allocate sufficient movement space. On the flip side, sealing and routing are not ideal for structural repair. It can only be an effective remedy for insignificant concrete cracks.
Concrete Crack Stitching
Another way of repairing concrete cracks is by stitching. This technique involves drilling entry and exit holes along the cracked surface. After this, the contractor runs and firmly anchors several U-shaped wires or staples through these holes using grout or epoxy. Typically, this technique offers long-lasting and efficient results.
Final Thoughts
These are the three concrete crack repair methods you must know before calling in a crack repair service. Other techniques include dry pacing, drilling, plugging, gravity filling and overlays. Which method is best in any use case scenario largely depends on your crack repair professional's decision.
To learn more, contact a crack repair company.
Share