Welcome to my concrete blog. My name is Helen, and I hate stumbling over old and broken concrete. It makes a home, business or even a whole neighborhood look old and unkempt. To make the world a more beautiful place, I have decided to create this blog. In it, I plan to post everything I have learned about concrete over the years. I plan to include everything from maintenance schedules to upkeep tips to simple repairs to financial risks of broken concrete. If you have a patch of concrete anywhere on your property, I hope you enjoy the information in this blog and learn something new from it.
As a homeowner, you might want to consider calling a concrete service to repair any cracks and chips you have in your home's driveway and other concrete areas. While it might be tempting to try to address this damage yourself, there are some very good reasons why it's best left to a professional. Note a few things that most homeowners don't realize about concrete and its repair so you can then better understand why this work might be beyond your scope of expertise, even if you're somewhat handy with tools and other home repair jobs.
Concrete is not all alike
Concrete is made of a mixture of cement, gravel, sand, water, and sometimes materials like lime. This mixture is often adjusted according to your climate and the expected traffic over concrete. For driveways that need to be stronger against heavy vehicles, there may be more gravel and cement to make the concrete thicker, but for areas like a patio, there may be more sand in the mixture to keep the concrete softer.
Mixing up your own patching compound or using a generic compound from the home improvement store is one reason why patch jobs often look very unattractive and don't match the surrounding concrete. To avoid this patchy look on your driveway or walkway, you can call a concreter. He or she can examine your home's concrete surface and mix up some new concrete that more closely matches the current concrete's consistency and appearance.
The repair might be more than skin deep
A crack or chip in your concrete might seem easy enough to fix, but this problem may be more than skin deep. In other words, a chip or crack in the concrete may not be caused by simple age and normal wear and tear, but it may be a sign that the soil under the concrete is soft and is holding too much moisture. The concrete may be absorbing this moisture or it may be sinking in certain areas because of the soil's consistency.
Putting patching compound over this area without bracing up the soil or even adding lime or clay to make it thicker and stronger may simply mean more cracks over time. You might also wind up with a driveway or walkway that eventually just splits in two and which cannot be fixed with simple patching compound. A concreter can examine the cause of the split or other such damage and be sure it's addressed properly to avoid more damage and needed repairs.
Share30 June 2016
