have a situation with a concrete apron that needs to be remedied in one form or another.  The slab has started to “sink” toward the house causing rainwater to run between the slab and the foundation.  Since I live in interior Alaska this creates multiple problems as the water soaked ground starts to freeze.

I’m considering two solutions.  One is to cut the slab 6′ out from the house, jackhammer the existing concrete, and pour a thicker slab graduated away from the house.  The second (and less work) is to use some type of top finish on the existing surface that could be built up to swail the water away from the house.  The local cement plant recommends using quick-crete.  My concern is that the quick-crete will not completely bond to the existing concrete, leaving a posibility of water seeping under the quick-crete and popping the patch during the first good freeze.

I also have another concrete slab problem born by a cheezy contractor that has since declared bankrupsy…so my chances of remedy by him are slim to none at this point.

He was contracted to install a monolithic slab under our second story front deck.  Since we live on a hill the front (10′ out from the house) of the slab had to be 36″ high in order to sit 1′ into the ground as a footing.  The contractor must have miscalculated the concrete required for the pour and made up for it in the following manner:  1) He reduced the height of the front of the slab to 24″ and the thickness to 2″, which meant no footing.  2)  He used no reinforcement (rebar, screen, ..ect) except 4 four foot long bars across a 40′ span drilled and epoxied into the house foundation wall.  3)  the slab is not monolithic in that only the front and rear edges were poured in that fashion.  Realizing his mistake after the pour he patched the side egdes to make them look “monolithic”…which have now failed.  The concrete used was fiber filled which does not make up for lack of screen and rebar reinforcement.

The result of this cluster #@&** is that the slab cracked just past the rebar which was attached to the existing foundation and started to move down the hill taking my new 10′ by 40′ deck and supports with it.  I seem to have stopped it by boring five 6′ deep, 8″ diameter holes just in front of the front face of the slab and filling them with concrete filled sono tubes ladened with rebar.  Still I have a 2″ crack running the length of the slab. 

I can reset the deck supports, fill the crack, build forms around the sono tubes running the length of the slab to hide my “fix”, and repour around the sides to fix the edges.  Or should I tear it out?                                                                                   

I look forward to your comments…..thanks,

Reno in Alaska