Floor Patching and Leveling

This job was in Huntington beach California. The customer was a general contractor that had a floor in terrible condition. After consulting several sub contractors and product suppliers I was called to see if I could help patch the floor in a permanent and cost effective way.

Whenever I approach a floor with significant damage I consider the future use of the floor. The recommendations from other contractors were expensive and excessive.This area was owned by a property management company and was going to b used as a retail store with a short loop commercial carpet.

My factors to consider are;

Weather/ exposure – This floor is in southern California which has moderate temperatures and its also indoors so this is the best case scenario. Because the concrete will loose heat through the footing around the perimeter and the soil underneath I know that the top portion suffer only gradual temperature changes..

Installation Requirement – Because this is a short loop carpet the floor will need to be smooth and free of all but the smallest defects.

Appearance or Future Consideration – The landlord did not pay the GC to make the floor brand new. Only to apply materials necessary to accommodate this installation and future installation of a similar type.

My treatment of these types of situations is becoming very routine. The cracks and major holes are cleaned, primed with masonry adhesive and filled with rapid set brand’s Cement All. Cement all has proven both indoor and outdoor to grip existing masonry surfaces exceptionally well.

I also frequently mix pea gravel into the cement all when filling in very large or wide areas to compensate for cement shrink.

Here is the patched floor. These are some spots were the floor was in reasonable condition.

floor patching

In other areas the floor looked like a grenade testing facility. In these scenarios i mix the cement all in a 5 gallon bucket into a soup and add pea gravel if i can. Smoothing the whole mixture onto the top with a squeegee.

Once all areas are in a reasonable condition I spray the entire floor surface with a glue using hudson sprayer. Then i mix a floor leveling compound and use a squeegee to fix an minor imperfection that may remain.

Typically this will eliminate about 99% of defects wich is good enough to let the floor guys touch up the floor as they see fit.