Concrete seems solid and indestructible, like bedrock for your building. And, in many ways it is! But it still requires occasional care and maintenance, both to ensure its own longevity as well as the safety of everything, and everyone, that it carries day in and day out.
One of the aspects of your concrete flooring that is important to monitor is the area around your expansion joints. They play an important role, allowing the otherwise brittle concrete to flex as needed under the weight of constant foot traffic, machinery, stored goods, temperature fluctuations, etc. In short, there is a lot working against your flooring’s integrity.
Damaged Expansion Joints - Why Worry About It?
If you live or have spent any time in an area with cold winters and hot summers, you can appreciate how bad a frost heave can be. They are essentially Mother Nature’s jackhammer, breaking up the pavement on the roads and creating bumps and crevices that can be lethal to your car’s suspension and tires.
When the expansion joints in your concrete floor are damaged, the same issue is created. The slabs become uneven, causing not only a dangerous environment for employees, but also an inconsistent and unstable surface for your stored product and vehicles.
In addition, if you have an epoxy floor coating system installed, it too can be cracked and compromised because of the shifting underneath.
How Do You Fix It?
A lot of commercial and industrial painting companies would simply replace the epoxy coating over the floor, but that’s really a band-aid that does nothing to keep the issue from coming up again. It would be like painting over rust on your car, providing a clean surface for just as long as the paint lasts but never solving the problem. Our process, on the other hand, includes the following:
- Grind out the joint - This removes all of the weak concrete and paint
- Rebuild the joint with an epoxy mortar
- Epoxy coating - The epoxy is applied, and we cut a line down the surface
- Fill the line - For this we use a flexible polyurethane joint filler that will allow the joint to flex as needed without causing damage
So this leaves one final question: how do your expansion joints look? If they’re a little worse for the wear, why wait for a huge problem? At Painters USA, we would love to help you get ahead of it. Please contact us with any questions you might have!