Home inspections confirm some of the obvious things and root out others. We knew there were a few issues, and ended up doing a second inspection to pull carpet back to see the extent of our potential problems.
All homes built slab on grade have cracks, even our post tension slab at our previous place. This new project was no exception. We knew there were going to be some problems, but the full extent couldn’t be known until all of the carpet, tile, and thinset had been removed.
This was the original tile in the entry, and it displayed a little displacement in the grout and the ever obvious broken tile. A quick rap with the butt of a hammer confirmed some hollow space below, but without demolition you just don’t know.
Slab cracks were not the only issue we encountered. Our entire family room was laid on cement, not thin set!
This is a concrete prep tool, and attaches to a floor polish type unit. This eats thinset like butter, and tackles all sorts of glue and other things stuck to the slab.
Concrete floor grinders use a diamond/carbide head and are a much more aggressive version of the above tool. This can get into the underlying slab if not careful.
This is the room after 6 hours with a carbide surface prep tool, and 4 hours with a seven inch diamond cup. Not much progress, and the discouragement and tool rental fees were adding up.
After a week of no successful material removal, we were left with one final option- a concrete scarifier. This is the type of equipment that is used to surface the freeways.
Concrete surface prep makes an unbelievable amount of dust.
After scarification in two directions, I started pretty deep on the right. This tool eats concrete without breaking a sweat, and you could easily get into the slab if you weren’t careful.
The concussive effect was enough to allow the carbide head to do it’s job with the surface material, while leaving the underlying slab completely damage free. Crisis narrowly averted. You might be wondering- why didn’t we hire a contractor for this? We couldn’t even get in touch with anyone from page one of google…
