Concrete Crack & Floor Repair in Bloomington, IN

Concrete crack and floor repair is part of almost every floor we coat in Bloomington, and sometimes it is the whole job. Monroe County sits on limestone karst. Wikipedia describes the land around Bloomington as irregular limestone with sinkholes, ravines, sinking streams, springs and caves. Slabs in this ground crack for ordinary reasons, like shrinkage, and sometimes because the soil underneath has shifted. Before anything gets filled, we work out which kind of crack we are looking at.

Why the ground matters here

A 1984 Purdue University report for the Indiana Department of Highways studied geotechnical problems in the karst region of southern Indiana. It described water carrying soil down into openings in the limestone, which leads to subsidence and sinkholes. Most garage and basement cracks we see are much smaller than that. Still, the same process can settle a corner of a slab or open a crack along a control joint. Linton, in Greene County, adds a different cause: Wikipedia notes that sinkholes from old underground coal mines still appear on private property there.

Types of damage we repair

• Hairline and shrinkage cracks: opened with a grinder, filled with a rigid or semi-rigid filler and ground flush.
• Wider stable cracks: routed out and filled with an epoxy or polyurea crack filler, sometimes reinforced across the crack.
• Spalls and pop-outs: loose concrete chipped out and rebuilt with an epoxy mortar or patching compound.
• Scaled surfaces: freeze-thaw and brine damage ground back to sound concrete and leveled.
• Broken control joints: chipped joint edges rebuilt, and joints filled or left open depending on the slab.
• Door thresholds: the broken lip at the garage door rebuilt so the coating ends on a clean edge.

When a crack needs more than filler

Some cracks tell us to stop. Warning signs include a crack that has gotten wider over the past year, one side sitting higher than the other, a slab that rocks or sounds hollow when tapped, and doors or walls that have started to stick or crack too. A coating will crack along with any of these. In those cases, we recommend having the slab or foundation looked at first. This Old House puts foundation repair tied to large cracks at about $2,150 to $7,730 or more, and eLocal lists engineer assessments at $350 to $900. We do not do structural work, and we will tell you when the problem is beyond a floor repair.

Resurfacing badly worn slabs

A floor with widespread scaling, many pits or a rough, worn surface may need a thin resurfacing layer before it can take a coating. HomeGuide lists concrete resurfacing at about $3 to $7 per square foot. For many garages, though, grinding plus spot repairs gets the slab sound enough without a full resurface. We will show you where the damage is and what fixing it would involve.

Repairs under a coating vs. repairs on their own

Under a coating, repairs only have to be sound and flat, because the coating hides them. On a bare floor, you will see the patches. We can repair a slab now and coat it later, but it usually makes more sense to do both at once, since the floor is already ground and empty.