Thread: New garage floor with surface defects

I just had a garage built and found the a series of surface defects where leaves were worked into the surface and exposed during powerwashing. Is this common and how do you fix it?

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"Is this common ..."

Leaves are going to land where thay land, not much can be done about that. But the leaves should/could have been removed before the concrete was floated.

"...how do you fix it?"

Not sure.
You could try a surface patch

Architectural Art... People pay lots of money for that .

As Vern said, some folks pay for that look!

About the only thing that you could do is to have the areas ground down and then use a concrete patch. It will most likely look worse than what you now have.

If it was me, I would float out the low spots, grind down the high spots and then seal or paint the concrete with epoxy paint that is made for garage floors.

That's when you say "You know, I've *always wanted* a tiled garage floor, they are so neat!".

Originally Posted by Tim Dike

I just had a garage built and found the a series of surface defects where leaves were worked into the surface and exposed during powerwashing. Is this common and how do you fix it?

As mentioned it is an easy fix if you apoxy the garage floor which you may want to do anyway. Epoxy will keep the floor from being stained with oil spills and such plus the touch up of the concrete will not show afterwards. The reality is once the goodies are in the garage and the cars are parked in there as well you will never notice the leaf marks.

I think I see a trilobite in one of those photos!

Originally Posted by John Arnold

I think I see a trilobite in one of those photos!

Man, that is some old concrete

Originally Posted by Ted Menelly

Man, that is some old concrete

Now be honest Ted, you had to look that up just so you could comment on it and impress AM

Trilobites ("three-lobes") are a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita.

Notice that I had to look it up!

Originally Posted by Jim Luttrall

Now be honest Ted, you had to look that up just so you could comment on it and impress AM

Notice that I had to look it up!

Nah

I was living back then and remember them from the good ole days

I now have a new mental picture when I hear the phrase "old fossil"!

The leaf looks like its from a silver leaf maple. I'd leave them just for character.

When I was a kid, if there was wet concrete anywhere you'd find my initials or my shoe print in it.

Know of a street sidewalk that still has my initials in it and it is that sidewalk is over 40+yrs. old.

rick

Originally Posted by fritzkelly

You were still doing that in your 30's??

Heck, I did it 3 yrs. ago. 53 as of 8/29. Hard to break old habits.

rick

Now if I had some smashed road kill mixed in then I could have done a fossil theme for the garage. But I just wanted a smooth floor. Looks like I will be going with a tiled floor and perhaps some leveling compound would give me a smooth surface to apply the tile on.

My next worry seems far more serious. The concrete was poured in two stages, first the freeze footer 8" x 36" and then the pad 24' x 34' x 4". What concerns me are the gaps where the second pour doesn't appear to have been tamped down and there are big voids. See attached pics. Now I am wondering what is under the rest of my floor.

Originally Posted by Tim Dike

Now if I had some smashed road kill mixed in then I could have done a fossil theme for the garage. But I just wanted a smooth floor. Looks like I will be going with a tiled floor and perhaps some leveling compound would give me a smooth surface to apply the tile on.

My next worry seems far more serious. The concrete was poured in two stages, first the freeze footer 8" x 36" and then the pad 24' x 34' x 4". What concerns me are the gaps where the second pour doesn't appear to have been tamped down and there are big voids. See attached pics. Now I am wondering what is under the rest of my floor.

That is common with slabs and is not really an issue other than aesthetic.

One comment and opinion I would like to make is I never thought 4 inches for a garage or driveway was anywhere near substantial enough. Maybe 6 inches and rebar.

2 tons of vehicle lurching forward and downward thrust from stopping adds up to twicw the weight, if not more. Anything I ever built from the slab up I always poured 6 inches in the drive and garage. 6 inches with the rebar in the middle beats the heck out of 4 inches for the application any day. Ot to mention a lot of drives just have 6x6 mesh in them.

Just curious, why can you see the edge of the slab? Is it common practice in your area to place the slab on top of the perimeter foundation? In my area, the slab is typically placed next to the perimeter foundation (aka the frost or freeze wall). The frost wall extends several inches above the slab, with the stud wall on top of the foundation. I'm always interested in seeing how construction practices vary in different areas of the country.

Both pours were never vibrated ,that's why you have gaps.

Can the voids be filled in by patching them? If so what should I look out for.

I'm told that this type of pour is common for our area (NW Missouri). But it looks hideous to me and takes away from an otherwise nice looking garage. Our codes call for either an 8x36 freeze footer with a min. 4" pad, or an 18 x 18 FF with a 6" pad. The footer on mine was trenched out (no forms) and is anything but straight. Rebar was bent over and tied in with the floor. But there are places where there is barely 4" of overlap from the floor onto the footer. The job was inspected and passed, but with such short cuts taken all around, I wonder how long before the real problems show up.

I had a builder tell me one time, one of the reasons he does not like inspectors, was that this one inspector wrote up the fact that, yes the builder went out of his way to patch, the floor patches in the garage were of a differant color. I just looked at him and shook my head. Some people are meant to just flip hamburgers.

My concrete guy is telling me that he is willing to patch the spots with an acrylic patch crete and then reseal the whole floor with Elitecrete stained to give it a single color. How likely is this to stand up to traffic and powerwashing?

Others are telling me that the surface needs to be ground down and a Epoxy coating needs to be applied.

Tim

I have worked with concrete contractors from residential construction to interstate pavements and I have seen allot of quality and workmanship issues.
Your contractor has demonstrated poor workmanship by floating leaves into the slab and failed to vibrate the concrete which caused the honeycomb along the edge. As a minimum I would use an epoxy grout to repair the voids and no matter how you do it will look patched unless you apply some type of epoxy paint over the whole floor.

If you use the original contractor to do these repairs he should do it at no cost. If I had to pay for the repairs I would use someone else.

At this point I still owe $800 for the concrete job. So there is still some incentive for the contractor to fix the job. I am concerned that this will do little to fix it and have let him know that he will not get paid until I am satisfied with the work. After the sloppy way he has handled the work so far, I am concerned that any fix will not be lasting.