Category Archives: Concrete

Shrinkage Cracking in Concrete

Posted by in Buying/Maintaining a Home, Concrete, Shrinkage | January 30, 2018

Why Does Concrete Crack? There are many causes for cracking in concrete: overload; earth movements (settlement, frost heave, consolidation, soil shrinkage, soil expansion, landslide, etc.); material shrinkage; impact; etc.  This article considers shrinkage. What is shrinkage in concrete? Shrinkage occurs… Read More →

A Lifted (Heaved) Basement Floor Slab

Posted by in Basements, Concrete, The Unusual, Water Sources, Weather Events | August 08, 2016

What would cause a concrete basement floor slab to lift in this fashion? The basement floor slab was lifted up about eight inches or so.  The area of floor slab over the sanitary sewer lines was lifted more than the… Read More →

An Easy Way to Clean the Surface of Your Concrete Driveway

Posted by in Buying/Maintaining a Home, Concrete | January 25, 2016

Is your driveway discolored from years of dirt buildup (see feature photo). My neighbor found a fun hose attachment that allowed him to easily clean the dirt off the concrete without damaging the surface.  It’s called, “Briggs & Stratton Surface… Read More →

What is Slabjacking? Part 3 of 3 (Compare the results)

Posted by in Buying/Maintaining a Home, Concrete | January 18, 2016

In our last two posts we described slab jacking of concrete pavements. I thought some photos of the results would be interesting.                                    … Read More →

What is Slabjacking? Part 2 of 3 (In action)

Posted by in Buying/Maintaining a Home, Concrete | January 11, 2016

In our last post we briefly discussed slabjacking of concrete pavements. Since I recently had slab jacking performed at my home, I thought some photos of slabjacking in action would be helpful. You can see from the photographs that slabjacking is a… Read More →

What is Slabjacking? Part 1 of 3 (Introduction)

Posted by in Buying/Maintaining a Home, Concrete | January 04, 2016

Have you ever seen where a portion of a perfectly good concrete pavement has dropped excessively and is making walking or driving difficult?  Have you seen a dropped sidewalk, driveway, patio floor, or other walkway? It seems like waste to… Read More →

Cinder Concrete Floor Deck

Posted by in Concrete, Steel | July 13, 2015

Cinder concrete was an early development in concrete floor construction.  It was appeared about one hundred years ago or so, when engineers and builders started combining steel and concrete to frame a floor.  It was a method that used a… Read More →

What If I Don’t Fix My Leaking Basement?

Posted by in Basements, Concrete, Masonry | May 04, 2015

What can happen if I don’t properly address groundwater infiltration through my basement wall?  That is, assuming that the basement or foundation wall is not overloaded by the combination of earth and excessive groundwater pressures, what could possibly go wrong?… Read More →