Just recently we were contacted by this customer in Oxenford. He was a very nice bloke who had a beautiful home. He contacted us with three problems he needed solved, hopefully with one go.
His driveway had been placed years back. In recent years, he had the driveway resurfaced with covacrete and also his garage floor coating with an epoxy. Both the driveway and the garage were now flaking off!
Not only this, but his driveway looked to have a cold or flu, and was leaking out the centre.
I have to be honest in saying that the leaky driveway was definitely a bit of a curve ball.
The owner said that the driveway had cracked over time and that the water comes up after a lot of rain. With all the rain this year, the problem had shown up in a big way.
The owner also didn’t want to replace and concrete to keep costs down as much as possible.
What to do?… What to do? 🤔🤔🤔
After going home to have a think about it, I came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to be able to plug the leaking problem, but we could possibly divert it…
THE SCOPE
The plan we came up with was to add some extra sawcuts to the concrete to do two things.
Take pressure off the slab to help with any epoxying we did to the cracks.
Run a saw-cut through the leaking spot to create a channel for the leak to run the water to the bottom of the slab where the grass was.
This want a full proof plan by any means, and we couldn’t guarantee if it would work for sure, but it came at no cost to the owner and we were willing to try.
Once we had run the cuts, this did create a bit of a dilemma. The cuts had to run off centre to the other cuts, so a standard til pattern would have looked very odd. Instead we decided on a custom ashlar design to incorporate the cuts into the new finish.
THE EXECUTION
Step 1: Grinding & Preparation
We decided to grind the surface back to the original concrete in both the garage and the driveway. This way we could see where any cracks were and ensure we got the best possible bond for the new surface. Plus it would show up our leaky hole a bit better.
Once the surface was removed by Shane, our specialist grinder, we could see that there were multiple cracks and exactly where the leak was coming from.
.
Step 2: Saw-Cutting
With the cracks, they were filled with an epoxy. An epoxy works very well as it is 100% solids, so therefore doesn’t shrink, plus it grabs to the existing concrete very well.
Note: Although the epoxy does work well, over time the cracks will most likely return in some form.
Strategic saw-cuts were out in to pass through the leaky spot and divide up the slab better.
Step 3: Base Coating
The surface was then base coated in a concrete grey colour to create a neutral tone for the grout lines in the finished surface.
This now creates a smooth / flat finish ready for the decorative top coat. Not just that but it also creates a harder overall finish to the end product.
Step 5: Apply Decorative Finish
The custom pattern was laid out and then the finished surface was applied. A combination of charcoal, black and grey were chosen to tie in with house colours.
Step 6: Sealing
Once all the protective masking was removed and all clean up around the area is done, the concrete was all sealed using a a solvent based acrylic sealer.
Note: There are many different sealers available on the market that have different properties, but a solvent based acrylic is hard to beat for client affordabilit, ease of re-application and performance for its cost. We find it is exceptional value for The customer.
JOB DONE
The project came up great and the customer was stoked, as were we.
In the days following the completion, we had a fair bit of rain, and you know what???
NO SNOTTY LIQUID COMING OUT OF THE DRIVEWAY!
If you have a project like this, reach out to us, or if you have someone you know that might benefit from our services, please share! We would love to hear from you 😁
Great job Crory👍