Concrete Crack & Floor Repair in Missoula, MT

Concrete crack & floor repair is part of almost every coating job we do, and sometimes it is the whole job. Interior slabs crack as they shrink and settle. Garage floors flake and pit where meltwater sits. Control joints chip under tire and jack wheels. Left alone, those spots grow, collect water and grit, and give any coating a weak edge to peel from.

Why Missoula slabs get damaged

Freeze-thaw is a big part of it. Wikipedia's figures for Missoula show about 45 days a year that stay below freezing and many more nights that dip below it, so water in shallow cracks and pores freezes and thaws over and over. Road treatment adds to it. Missoula County uses a magnesium chloride brine and salted sand, and the 2008 Sutter study for the South Dakota DOT found magnesium and calcium chloride can chemically attack hardened cement paste, causing cracking and loss of strength. The first few feet inside a garage door, where brine collects, usually show it first.

Types of damage we repair

• Hairline and shrinkage cracks: cleaned out and filled so they do not telegraph through a coating.
• Wider and moving cracks: routed and filled with flexible or rigid material, depending on whether the crack is still moving.
• Flaking and scaling: weak surface ground off, then rebuilt with a repair mortar or resurfacer.
• Spalls and pits: broken areas cut back to sound concrete and patched level.
• Control joints: chipped edges rebuilt, and joints filled or left open as the slab requires.

Telling a cosmetic crack from a structural one

Most garage and basement cracks are cosmetic: thin, flat, and not getting wider. Others point to something bigger. Signs to watch for include one side of a crack sitting higher than the other, cracks that keep widening, water coming through, or doors that no longer close because the slab moved. HomeAdvisor notes that foundation repair is a different job, often costing $2,150 to $7,730 or more. If we see signs of structural movement, we tell you that before quoting a floor.

Repair before coating

Every coating we install gets repair as part of the prep. After diamond grinding opens the surface, we fill cracks and pits, rebuild flaked areas and level low spots that would hold water. On a flake floor, small repairs disappear under the finish. On a solid color or metallic floor, repaired cracks can show faintly, and we explain that up front.

Repair as its own job

Not every repair has to lead to a coating. If you just want a cracked, pitted garage floor fixed and sealed, or a few broken joints rebuilt in a shop, we can quote that on its own. HomeAdvisor lists simple patching at $25 to $250 and broader resurfacing at $1,000 to $5,000, depending on the size of the space.