Garage Floor Replacement

LESLIE: Joan in New York is dealing with a concrete problem. What can we do for you?

JOAN: Yes. We have a 48-year-old house with an oversized, two-car garage. Over the years, cracks have occurred in the cement floor.

TOM: OK.

JOAN: They have been repaired but eventually reappear. We’re wondering if there’s any solution, other than tearing up the entire floor.

TOM: Not really because you have a structural problem.

JOAN: Yes.

TOM: For whatever reason, the floor is moving. It could be that the soil underneath the slab was never compacted properly. It could have been that there was biodegradable material that’s in that dirt – like tree parts and stuff like that – and they’ve rotted out over the years and caused voids. And so, the fact that it continues to crack is just evidence of the fact that the slab is continuing to move and you’re not going to stop that without a major project.

Now, if this was a commercial property and it was a very expensive floor, we could talk about mudjacking and things like that. But for your average residential home, it doesn’t make sense to do any of those sorts of structural repairs. A garage floor, fortunately though, is not load-bearing; it’s basically just a durable surface that allows you to park your car on it, so I wouldn’t worry about it structurally. But if you want to stop it from cracking, it needs to be broken out and then properly poured and reinforced.