Concrete Floor Resurfacing Or Replacement, And How To Tell
The question worth settling before anything else is whether the slab is worn or actually failing, because concrete floor resurfacing answers only one of those.
A slab that is dusting, carries surface spalls, has lost its power trowelled finish or is covered in old patch repairs is a concrete floor resurfacing job. The structure is sound and the top inch is not. A slab cracked right through with the sections moving independently, one that rocks under a forklift, or one that has settled unevenly is not, and putting a new surface on it wastes the money. We will tell you which of the two you have, even when that means advising you to budget for replacement.
What Concrete Floor Resurfacing Actually Involves
Concrete floor resurfacing is more removal than application, which is usually what surprises a Woodstock plant manager seeing it quoted for the first time.
We shot blast or diamond grind the whole area back to sound concrete, lifting the failed surface, the old patches and the contamination together. Cracks are routed out and filled rather than papered over. Spalls are cut back to square edges and rebuilt. A cementitious or resin based resurfacer then goes down at the thickness the wear demands, screeded and finished flat.
Falls to drains are corrected at this stage where they are wrong, because this is the only practical chance to fix them without breaking the floor out.
Woodstock Slabs Need Concrete Floor Resurfacing For Local Reasons
Two things wear slabs here into needing concrete floor resurfacing faster than traffic alone would manage.
The dock comes first. Ontario passes through freezing on roughly 77 days a year, and every one of those cycles lands on the apron and the opening stretch of floor behind the overhead door, along with the salt trailer tires bring in. That zone is almost always the first concrete floor resurfacing we are asked to price.
The second is age and moisture working together. Much of the industrial stock in Woodstock and Ingersoll went up before under slab vapour barriers were routine, over deep glacial till with groundwater close by in the river terraces. Slabs like that stay damp, and a damp slab coated and stripped a few times over is usually the one that ends up needing concrete floor resurfacing.
