Slabs & Concrete

A Summerlin homeowner told me his slab could not possibly have a moisture problem because it had not rained in two months and the desert is dry. The relative humidity probe in his slab read 89 percent. Both statements were true, and that is the part that trips people up. Where the water comes from […]

The most expensive garage floor I have ever been involved with cost the owner twice, because the first coating went down on a slab nobody tested. It looked immaculate for five months. Then it started lifting in dinner-plate discs, each one with a chalky white ring underneath. What that white ring is Water vapor moving

Everyone in San Marco has seen the same failure: a driveway with one panel that has dropped a half inch below the rest, usually near where the old sewer lateral was replaced. The concrete did not fail. Something under it moved, and nobody checked before the pour. Sand is not automatically a good base Northeast

The crack that runs parallel to a bar, about two inches in from an edge, with a rust stain weeping out of it — that one tells you exactly what is happening inside and roughly how long it has been going on. I see it on Coral Gables driveways, seawall caps and pool decks constantly,

I have poured flatwork on Blackland clay for most of two decades, and the driveways that come back to haunt you are never the ones that cracked. They are the ones where a section lifted two inches above its neighbor after a wet spring. Cracks are cosmetic. Differential movement is the thing that ruins a

Two driveways on the same Squirrel Hill street, both poured in the same decade, both salted every winter. One has a surface you could still eat off. The other lost its top eighth of an inch years ago and now sheds sand every spring. The difference was decided in about ninety seconds at the batch