Concrete Crack & Floor Repair in Springfield, IL

Concrete crack and floor repair is part of almost every coating job we do in Springfield, IL. With a median home built in 1972, many local garage and basement slabs are 50 years old or more. Over that time they shrink, settle, take on road salt and get patched. A coating shows every flaw beneath it, and loose or broken concrete under a coating is where peeling starts. We repair the slab first.

What we repair

• Hairline and shrinkage cracks: opened slightly with a grinder and filled with a resin filler so they do not telegraph through the coating.
• Wider cracks: cleaned out and filled with a rigid or semi-rigid filler, then ground flush.
• Spalls and pitting: broken and salt-scaled areas filled and leveled.
• Control joints: chipped edges rebuilt; joints filled for a smooth floor or left open and coated.
• Worn or scaled surfaces: resurfaced with a thin overlay before coating where the damage is widespread.

Salt scaling by the garage door

The front few feet of a Springfield garage take the most punishment. Salty meltwater pools there, and with January averaging 27.9°F it freezes and thaws repeatedly. The surface flakes and pits, sometimes down to the stone in the concrete. Grinding removes the loose material, and we rebuild the low areas with a repair mortar or resin before coating.

Cracks and mine subsidence

Springfield's history includes coal mining and processing, and the Illinois Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund counts 107,716 acres of Sangamon County in its mine-related zones. Most cracks we see come from ordinary drying shrinkage and settling. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency's homeowner guidance describes subsidence cracks as ones that appear suddenly and then widen and grow, often with doors and windows that start to stick. If a crack in your floor fits that description, or if one side is higher than the other, we will not simply fill it and coat over it. You may want a structural engineer, and in Sangamon County mine subsidence coverage is part of property insurance, so your insurer is worth a call too.

Signs a crack needs more than filler

• It is wider than about a quarter inch or keeps getting wider
• One side sits higher than the other
• Water seeps through it
• New cracks show up in walls, ceilings or around door frames at the same time
• Doors and windows have started to stick

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Repair without a coating

Some homeowners only want the slab fixed. We can fill cracks, rebuild joints and resurface a scaled area without coating the whole floor. Bare repaired concrete will keep absorbing salt, though, so if the damage came from winter brine, a sealed coating is what stops it from returning.

After the repair

Fillers cure before we coat; we grind them flush with the surrounding concrete so the finished floor is level. A repaired crack in a slab that still moves seasonally may show again as a fine line. We will tell you if we expect that and how a flake finish can make it less noticeable.