Ask the Builder: Different ways to patch a concrete crack

Several days ago, I had a texting exchange with a very smart woman who attends my church. She reached out to me the day before with a photo of water inside her garage and another showing a crack in the garage foundation wall near the water puddle. A rain shower had happened the day before, after weeks of no rain.

My wife and I are friends with this young woman. We go out to dinner every now and then. I’ve done some emergency repair work for her at her condominium. Understand that she is fearless and possesses a will stronger than titanium. I admire all of these qualities.They come in handy when you have to deal with contractors.

This young woman's job is reading contracts to discover loopholes that could cost her company money. She’s an expert at making sure contracts are crystal clear. She also helps craft specifications included in these contracts.

I, on the other hand, have 30 years of experience listening to the sorrowful lamentations from homeowners just like you that hired a contractor hoping he would do the right thing. I’ve received tens of thousands of emails from homeowners sharing their dissatisfaction with the work done at their homes. Your local Better Business Bureau office will confirm that contractor complaints are at the top of their list.

I made the mistake of sending extra information to my busy friend. All she asked me when she sent me the photos was, “What trade do I hire to fix this problem?”

I replied, “A handyman.” I should have stopped there. I thought giving her more information would ensure the repair would be done right.

Very early the next morning I decided to write up a short step-by-step summary describing how the crack should be repaired. If you have a crack at your home that does leak water, I feel you should follow my AsktheBuilder.com motto: “Do it Right, Not Over! In her case, I doubted that the water had entered through the crack. I know the grading around her garage sends water away from the foundation.

This thought went through my head the day before, when I saw the photo of the crack: Most of the handymen she is likely to hire will probably not fix the crack the correct way. Which means the possibility of having to re-do the work, which will be that much harder and cost three times what it should have cost in the first place. I’ll send an email sharing how the crack should be repaired and give her links to the best products.

She thanked me for sharing it, and as we texted back and forth before the workday began for both of us she wrote, “I just want to hire a reliable person.”

Reliable means the person will show up. Reliable doesn’t mean the person is qualified to make the repair. Those two things were swirling in my head based on the thousands of email exchanges and phone calls I’ve had with other homeowners

The email I sent contained not only the concise and simple step-by-step repair guidelines, but also links to the right products. I felt that, armed with this knowledge, she’d cut to the chase when interviewing contractors to see if they knew the best way to patch the crack.

Moments later she told me she had no intention of interviewing anyone. She was going to base her hiring decision on reviews in an effort to locate a reliable person.

Tell me, how many ways can you think of to patch a foundation crack? Here are a few:

—Get a tube of concrete crack caulk at a local hardware store.

—Purchase a small tub of pre-mixed concrete patch material and trowel it in and over the crack.

—Slather on roofing cement.

—Order some magic sticky material hawked by a carnival barker.

—Use concrete epoxy with fiberglass tape.

I could imagine all of these possible methods, and a few more, being proposed by the reliable people the woman might hire. I can see most of those methods failing and the crack reopen.

After our text conversation started to get a little contentious, I decided to step back for fear of blowing up the relationship.

Here’s the kicker. Hours later, she called me on the phone as if nothing really happened. She said: “Guess what? I found what caused the leak. A gallon jug of drinking water up on a shelf sprung a leak! It had nothing to do with the crack at all!”

When you hire people to fix things around your house, do you just trust everything is going to be done right? Don’t hope. There's usually a best solution; your challenge is to figure out what it is and to hire the contractor who has figured it out as well. In this case: Use the concrete epoxy with fiberglass tape. The epoxy has a 2,900 pounds-per-square-inch tensile strength. That’s over seven times the tensile strength of the concrete.

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