What we do · Drainage
Water That Sits Is Water That Damages
Standing water is the mechanism that carries chlorides into concrete. Fixing drainage is the cheapest structural intervention available.
The structure, its age, and what you have noticed. If there is an engineer's report, send that instead — we will price what it identifies.
Exposed
A garage is a structure left outside for fifty years
Unit rates
Repair quantity is unknowable until it is opened
Parking
Where displaced cars go decides the whole program
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
Ponding is treated as cosmetic
A puddle in a garage looks like nothing. It is chloride-laden water sitting in contact with concrete for hours after every rain, driving contamination into the slab at exactly that spot. Areas that pond are always the areas that spall, and the connection is rarely made.
The connection is easy to miss because ponding looks like a nuisance rather than a mechanism. It helps to think of a puddle as a chloride solution held in contact with concrete for several hours after every rain, several dozen times a year, for the life of the building.
Why garages pond
- Original slope that was inadequate or built flat.
- Blocked or crushed drains that nobody maintains.
- Long-term deflection changing the original falls.
- Repairs that raised the surface locally.
- Coatings applied without correcting slope first.
Where the water is supposed to go
A garage deck should fall to drains that are clear, connected and maintained. In practice drains fill with grit and debris, downpipes get crushed during other work, and the falls that were built get altered by patch repairs that sit slightly proud of the surrounding slab.
Clearing and testing the drains is the cheapest intervention available on a garage, and it is worth doing before any repair scope is priced — because some of what looks like a repair problem is a maintenance problem that has been running for years.
How we handle it
- 01Map ponding before designing repairs.
- 02Clear and repair drains as part of the work.
- 03Correct slope where repair allows it.
- 04Detail coating terminations at drains properly.
- 05Verify drainage after the work with water.
Map where the garage ponds before designing anything. The ponding map and the deterioration map are almost always the same drawing, and correcting drainage is the cheapest thing an owner can do to slow future damage.
Said plainly
Where we stop
Some ponding is caused by long-term structural deflection and cannot be corrected by surface work alone. We will say so rather than adding topping that changes the loading.
FAQ
Common questions
- Is ponding really a problem?
- It is chloride-laden water sitting against concrete for hours. Ponding areas are always the spalling areas.
- What is the cheapest intervention?
- Correcting drainage and clearing drains.
- Can all ponding be corrected?
- Not where it is caused by structural deflection. We will say so rather than adding topping.
- Should drainage be checked after work?
- Yes, with water.
The practical side
Displaced Parking
A garage under repair has fewer spaces. Where the displaced cars go is the question that decides whether the project happens at all.
Read more →
Phasing
How the work is divided determines how users experience it and how long the whole thing takes.
Read more →
Inspection
A garage assessment should be done by a structural engineer who is not going to do the repairs.
Read more →
Budgeting
Garage restoration is predictable in kind and unpredictable in quantity, which makes it a reserve item that almost nobody reserves for.
Read more →
The Cost of Deferring
Concrete deterioration is not linear. Once corrosion starts it accelerates, which makes deferral more expensive than it looks.
Read more →
More what we do
Concrete Restoration
Salt reaches the reinforcement, the steel corrodes, the corrosion expands, and the concrete breaks away. In a Florida garage it is a matter of when.
Read more →
Expansion Joints
Joints allow the structure to move, and they are the most heavily worked and shortest-lived element in a garage.
Read more →
Traffic Coatings
A traffic coating keeps water and chlorides off the concrete. Applied correctly it extends structural life substantially; applied over damage it hides it.
Read more →
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.