Filling a drain and leveling around it?

[DocsMachine]

My shop has a large French drain in one bay, basically they cast the floor around a 55 gallon drum without ends. It's simply filled with gravel and was intended to simply give snow melt from a car a place to go.

I'm setting up some machine tools in that bay, a long-term prospect, and I'm worried if one of them leaks a bunch of coolant or cutting oil. It'd basically head right for the gravel, and from there into the ground.

As the drain will likely never be used again, at least for a good number of years, I was thinking of just capping it with a sack or two of Sackrete or the like.

Simple enough, but the floor itself sinks toward the drain, which is at least two inches lower than the rest of the floor.

Is there something, or a technique, with which I could both fill the drain and raise the surrounding concrete up an inch or two?

The original concrete is an easy 40years old, and I believe was sealed, but has not been painted. the area to be filled is small, maybe 6' on a side. (It'd be a roughly circular patch.)

I'm not expecting pool-table flat, but if I could at least take some of the low away, that'd help.

Doc.

 

[The Cobbler]

pour the patch higher and look at Ardex brand patching compounds / They have some primer/self leveller options that you could fill up the rest with. it can get pricey .

 

[DocsMachine]

Do I need to worry about thin, "feathered" edges crumbling if I roll a pallet jack over it?

Doc.

 

[ConCretin]

Do I need to worry about thin, "feathered" edges crumbling if I roll a pallet jack over it?

Doc.

Be sure to get a product designed to feather out to nothing. Repair products are often differentiated by the thickness they can accommodate. A product that can be used for a deeper repair won't work for this type of application. You'll likely need a couple different products -one to fill the deeper sections and a second to do the final leveling.

I concur with the previous poster who suggested an Ardex product but there are a lot of them out there. Maybe call a local concrete construction supply house like WhiteCap and ask for a suggestion.

It would be a lot more work but one way to eliminate the feathered edge would be to make a shallow saw cut around the perimeter and chip out a little concrete on the inside to provide a key for the infill. As with many things, surface prep is vital for long term durability. Many of these products will achieve a compressive strength well in excess of the concrete below.

 

[Forgottonia]

If you don't need a level floor where the 55 gal drum is located maybe you could seal the bottom with a few inches of concrete. Then just put a couple inches of cat litter in the bottom and clean it out every few months. Oh sure, this sounds like a lazy man's solution. But then again, I'm pretty lazy.

 

[DocsMachine]

If you don't need a level floor where the 55 gal drum is located maybe you could seal the bottom with a few inches of concrete. Then just put a couple inches of cat litter in the bottom and clean it out every few months.

-Well, the original idea was to cap it with concrete/sackrete/whatever, but at a level maybe 4-6" down. Then, once the concrete had had a good chance to dry (all winter, say) I'd paint it, the exposed walls of the drum, and a few inches around the opening, with a good epoxy. (Wish I could do the whole floor, but that would require moving six or seven tons- literally- of machine tools.)

That way, if I did have an oil or coolant spill, it would have a place to collect.

Admittedly, if I don't fill in the low area, it'll still collect there, just over a wider area.

But again, this bay won't see a car or snowmelt again, likely for as long as I'm here- see "seven tons", above. So capping it solid wouldn't hurt a thing, and capping it and raising it up so it's a little more level, would just be icing on the cake.

Unfortunately, any grinding, sawing or chipping is basically out of the question. I can't easily move the machines, and there's enough stuff going on that even sacking or wrapping them would be troublesome.

Doc.