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I need to repair my driway that is badly cracked.
I found these options:
- some kind of plastic that comes out of a glue-gun called concrete patch from Home Depot
- cement/concrete mix sold as a half gallon reapir mix.
I tried both.
The first one looks out of place, it has totally different structure and color than the original concrete driveway has.
The second one cures in 5minutes, so if i mix it up then i can repair about 3ft of crack then my mix in the pot is solid and useless.
I had an idea. Has anyone tried it?
Pouring the concrete mix as powder into the cracks, smoothen the surface and remove left over with a brush. Then use a water sprayer bottle to dampen but not flood the concrete mix. Since this involves no mixing, I am not sure whether the concrete patch will be strong enough.
Any "repair" that you do to concrete is going to look like a repair. The only fix is removal and replace it. But I'm sure that's not what you're wanting to do. I've worked around trying to find a decent repair from a cement and sand mix to using an expansive plastic. The surest so far is Water Putty. It's an expanding type plastic based product that you mix with water and turn it into a putty. It dries an off white but it stays in the crack and doesn't crack or fall out unless the concrete moves. As it dries, you need to know it expands, so it swells as it dries. If you fill a crack with it, you'll need to rework it before it totally dries or it will have a hump in it. Like I say, there is no real patch for it. I've probably tried every concrete patch out there over the decades and none are worth the container they came in. They either dry a lousy color that's no where near concrete, fall out of the crack, turn back to a powder, or just fail. Best of luck with it though.
OK- Do you have a definite idea of what is causing the cracking? I suggest that you address that first, otherwise, you will probably be dealing with the cracking into the future...
Even if you feel very confident the cracks are old and the slab work is stable, you may want to monitor the areas you repaired for a while and see if the cracks widen any further.
To be honest, with cracks that wide the patch material may be inefficient: you might try just getting a bag of mortar mix and try adding a bonding adhesive. Clean the cracks as best you can first( if you already know that-sorry).
In the HD/Lowes stores I find 3 types of materials for this:
- polyurethane filler for glue-gun
- concrete mix (purpose not listed)
- fast setting concrete mix.
I am reluctant on putting polyurethane in, as it is a different material than the rest of the driveway. Fast setting is impossible to work with on long cracks. Concrete mix: does anyone use general purpise concrete mix to fill cracks? If I use concrete, will it crack again? The crack i patched last week with fast setting mix, has now hairline cracks along the patched crack. Does it signal the need for using flexible materials like polyurethane?
No one mentioned keying the crack before making any repairs. Sometimes concrete cracks in such a way that some keying happened on its own. It can be considered too much work but I'd thought I'd mention it anyway. Sometimes it helps; sometimes it doesn't.
I prefer reused Turn of the Century road brick or cobblestone but, otherwise, have no problem with grass growing in the cracks of concrete...the more there is the better.
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