slight concrete issue, and a question about it

[veedubman91]

so about 2 1/2 years ago we tore out the old concrete floor in my garage and re-did the entire thing. everything went well, but now i have an issue on the outside edge of the concrete where it meets the driveway. i have a section about a foot wide, and the length of the door opening of the floor that is outside the doors that is exposed to the outside elements (rain,snow,salt etc). in a few places it seems the weather is getting to it and you can take a key to it and scrape the concrete away leaving a powdery residue.

can i apply some sort of sealer/hardner on the exposed parts of the floor to help protect this? sorry, i dont have any pics at the moment.

 

[darkk]

Sounds troublesome....I'd call the guy that did the concrete work for you and ask him to look at it and give you a suggestion to fix or save the area. Sounds like a poor cure, over floated or poor concrete mix.

 

[veedubman91]

eveything else inside came out fine, and is strong, the only place is the very outside right where the concrete and pavment of the driveway meet. i was wondering if it was curing too quick for them as they were finishing as this was the last place that was fininshed off. i will try calling them, but would prefer to stay away since they were a couple idiots. they did a decent job but i was just not happy with the whole outcome in general.

 

[Edger]

Forget about the concreters, you will only get useless information if they were not reliable. It sounds like they either floated too much water towards that edge, or they pulled up too much water by working it too much, or the slab got rained on when it was wet. All these will soften the concrete.

A concrete hardener will increase the strength, but it may be too late to save the top surface. Hardener is low cost so it would be worth putting in on and you could do the whole floor. After that you have to work out if you want to diamond grind the top surface of that strip or leave it.

 

[veedubman91]

thanks for the information. i actually forgot to mention that in the next month to month and a half we are polishing the floor. that will take that top layer down a bit, then the hardner used during the polishing should help that as well.

 

[LegacyIndustrial]

Veedubman:

We spoke today. Our HD-7937 Densifier Plus would be the best offering.
Better for soft and old concrete.

Link: http://legacyindustrial.net/cart/concrete-densifier-plus-1-gallon-p-143.html

Good luck.

 

[veedubman91]

Veedubman:

We spoke today. Our HD-7937 Densifier Plus would be the best offering.
Better for soft and old concrete.

Link: http://legacyindustrial.net/cart/concrete-densifier-plus-1-gallon-p-143.html

Good luck.

yes we did, and thank you for the quick responses. i will be ordering this from your site in the next day or so.

 

[Edger]

Can you tell us if a contractor is polishing or is it DIY? What stage of polishing will you go to?

 

[veedubman91]

Can you tell us if a contractor is polishing or is it DIY? What stage of polishing will you go to?

contractor will not be polishing, but it is not 100% DIY either. heres the story:

my father in law owns his own equiptment rental company and he has the machine and tooling to polish the floor on site. he also knows the local rep for the company after dealing with them for years. the rep has agreed to come out with my father in law to my place and do the job with us.

as for stage, not sure yet and would like to get the reps oppinion on things. in my mind i love how the fully polished look, looks. but perhaps we wont go that far. i do like to have a clean garage, but i also do use it for working on cars etc, so it gets its use like a garage should

 

[Edger]

Have a look at this webpage for more information on polished concrete methods. http://www.situp.com.au/Polished Concrete.html

 

[veedubman91]

wow, nice. i just browsed reall fast for now, but there looks to be some really good info in there. i will take a further look at that later on today. thanks for that