Hi, I recently had a basement poured. Unfortunately there are a lot of cracks so I am concerned. My main concern is the retaining wall (first 2 pictures). You can see a big horizontal crack that has already formed in the front of it. There is also a large crack on the top slab piece of it. Lastly, there are a bunch of cracks in the floor. I am guessing this is because they didn't cut the slab far enough. When I brought this up to the contractor they said it is just cosmetic. I am not too nervous about the floor but am feeling pretty uneasy about the cracks in the retaining wall. Is this going to be a problem? If so, how would it be fixed? Thanks.
Concrete cracks. It has water in it... and that water has volume... when it evaporates, you usually get a few stress cracks that show up and you can't always control where it cracks.
On most of the floor it cracked exactly where it was supposed to, at their cut lines. On the last photo, concrete is going to want to crack at any square outside corner.
On that first photo, that looks like a cold joint, where they quit pouring, then came back and added more under the ductwork later. Anytime you do that you will get an uncontrolled joint between concrete that is a few minutes older than the first. And yes, its unfortunate and it looks bad but it is largely cosmetic. If that was outside, I would say redo it, because it would not stand up to freeze/thaw cycles. In a basement, it is pretty stable and it isn't going to want to break up like it would outside. But inside you could caulk it, or just put some topping mix on it if you don't want to see the big crack. If they cut out a 2 foot section and redo it, you will have 2 cracks, on either side of the repair. As the concrete cures, you are likely to get more microfractures on that ledge, because concrete does not like to be long and skinny like the ledge is. Anytime you have a long, skinny piece of concrete, it wants to break into smaller sections. This stress is greater outside when you have temperature extremes of hot / cold. A basement will be more of a constant temperature, but it doesn't mean it won't crack.
So around the foundation of my house, the concrete has rounded 'bubbles' of decorative concrete...Like, they started with traditional rectangles of concrete around the outside that go a couple feet up --to decoratively carry the foundation/basement up to the siding. On top of the regular concrete is this kinda decorative outcropping of rounded concrete...like, instead of being flat, it bows out so there's bubbles all along the perimeter--kinda like a Caramello bar(OMG I'm really sucking at describing but I hope you get the idea...)
One of the bubble-parts of a concrete rectangle has fallen off. Like it just gave up the ghost and dropped dead on the ground and there behind it is the old boring rectangle of concrete.
I took the bubble-part inside to defrost(It's like in the teens here and will be that way for like another week or more....) There was ice all over the front of it so it was pretty frozen on the outside--the back looks fine, obviously just came undone from the plain-concrete.
Is there something I can use to re-attach this piece to the original concrete--while it's still very cold and snowy out???? I know it's best to wait until the spring but I have no idea when that's going to be--sometimes it's June :(
I thought maybe a coating of cement and prop this piece in place for a couple of days? But maybe there's an epoxy that'll work better??? I saw Sacrete has a concrete glue but I didn't know if that would bond on vertical surfaces. The only other thing I can think of is E6000....
Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks
The lip of my garage floor where it meets the apron is starting to crumble in a couple areas. Is there something I can do to keep it from getting worse and/or conceal it? Perhaps some sort of metal sill nosing or threshold that I can fasten to the slab to cover and protect it?
[img]https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.doityourselft.com-vbulletin/2000x1504/2fb825fc_4c21_4f4d_813a_f70c3a5934e6_b215ae66e0339081798894e45511107ede6cd57b.jpeg[/img]
Something like this looks like it would suffice?
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02-18-21, 07:05 AM
