I recently bought a house with a concrete patio in the back. There are a few problems with it. I noticed it slopes slightly toward the house and it has several cracks running through it with grass growing up through them. What's my best bet to fix all of this. Or should I just tear it out and have a new one put in?
If budget allows then rip and replace is quite often a better choice. Otherwise you run the risk of leaving water to cause additional and much more expensive repairs to the foundation and more. In the long run you'd end up still replacing the patio AND ALSO have to repair what the water has damaged.
If you have the clearance you can always buy or build a frame and add to the existing concrete. It shouldn't take a lot of concrete mix just to add to the top for the sake of leveling it all off.
Call a local mudjacker, or two, to have them see if it's a good candidate for mudjacking. If so, it's going to be the cheapest option, and could buy a few more years minimum. You may want to seal the cracks and joints AFTER it's raised as well, as the less water intrusion, the better.........
The best is to rip it out and do over.
If you pour over top of the existing the cracks will come through the new concrete.
You didn't post your location but my experience with fill the cracks is that it just makes it worse with winter frosts.
I had a cracked concrete patio here in Minnesota ....it slipped toward the house. Tore it out and put in a gravel and sand base paver patio. It's now 22 years later and it is still in great shape. With our freezes and thaws here on the tundra, a concrete slab stands no chance.
And once you start getting cracks water just gets down in there, freezes and makes the cracking worse. That or it undermines the surface more, leading to further collapsing/sloping. Assuming you're in a climate that gets winter freezes.
You should use your User Control Panel page to set your location: http://www.diychatroom.com/usercp.php That helps others better guess what advice might work for you.
Sealing the cracks would help delay additional cracking. But the more important question is how bad is the slope toward the house and what amount of water is that dumping toward the foundation? That's the more important problem to fix, not just the cosmetic look of the patio. Eliminating water being dumped toward the foundation is the thing to fix.
amazing,,, NO pics/dimensions yet there are answsers,,, i'm from binghamton & have no idea wtf to suggest w/o more info other'n wtr draining towards anyone's home isn't a great situation :huh:
oh,,, well, then you do have some options in general:
1 - determine how/why the patio crk'd;
2 - determine if the crks are dynamic or static;
3 - repair the crack(s) properly;
4 - diamond saw new jnt pattern if its determined lack of
OR improper jnt patter caused/contributed to crks;
5 - overlay the slab referencing crks;
6 - rip out & replace.
sure you're from upstate ? would've guess'd downstate,,, nevertheless, in genl, responding to a ' general question ' is usually not any easier than a specific question w/OR w/o pictures/dimensions but that's just in general :thumbsup:
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