repairing large cracks in floor

[ericd]

This being my first post i must say Hello All. i have been trolling around here for a while and i have to say this is a very informative site and has more than enough ideas to keep a person busy for a while.

pretty much exactly a year ago i moved into my new home with a good sized single car garage. since i moved in i hated my floor, its cracked really badly and judging from the slab being below grade the soil has washed away from under the edges.

the cracks range from 1/4" to just over 1" wide. the shifting is up to 1.5" high in spots as seen in the pictures.

there is definatly no rebar or mesh in the floor. the only thing i came up with as a repair solution is to jack hammer it out, lift the garage (which is very full of ****) and pour a new floor and raised edges.

if anyone has any suggestions please let me know.
sorry for the crappy cellphone pictures.

 

[dcs Inc]

You could put some lipstick on this pig but it will still be a pig. Remove it. The breaking point is the movement. Installers will often apply an overlay system mimicking a random stone pattern following the cracks and then fill them with a flexible joint filler. The movement shown screams out a poorly placed non compacted sub grade. Nothing you can do with that.

 

[Big-Foot]

You may consider saw cutting around the sole-plates of the walls and busting out the center as long as those footings are not broken as well. If you go that route, you can drill and pin into the remaining footings and tie the new rebar to that to keep everything in check.

Dn't let anyone talk you into pouring a cap over the top of the slab. I let a company do that on one of my garage slabs and even though the cap was 3 to 5" thick and rebarred, it cracked badly as well. Turned out that the original floor, while 40+ years old had finished settling, it settled even further with a few tons of concrete poured on top of it... Bad move.

 

[ericd]

i threw out the cap idea in my head a long time ago, its cracked it will always crack. there so bad that they head right under my cinderblocks. its just a slab on grade, no footings/frost walls...

i cant just remove the center and leave the outside edges as most of the blocks along the crack "path" are split as well. all in all the floor is a lost cause.

i dont even know if i should bother repairing it or just grinding down the severely high spots so people do not break there necks. my friends (also a member here) suggested building a raised wooden floor ontop of it. i have a bit of research to do before i start that approach but it might be more cost affective for now untill i can just build new (hopefully someday)

 

[thegarageguy]

Wow....In my 10 years in biz, I must say this is most likely the worst slab I've seen. Needs to be torn out.

 

[bczygan]

Don't just tear out and repour.
After removal, check the base material, and if not in good shape, remove and replace it as well.
Most importantly, make sure you have proper and positive drainage. Get the slab well above surrounding grade and slope grade away from it. Provide gutters with downspouts that kick out at least 2' away from the building to get water away from the foundation.
This is also a chance to insulate and or put a slab heating system.
If a 1 car, I would be thinking about adding on.

 

[ericd]

yeah my hope is for now that i can just avoid having the place fall over and build larger (30' by 30' hopefully) in 4 years when i can re finance the house again. not what i was hoping to do but hey, such is life.

thanks all for the comments so far, pretty much the outcome i knew lol.