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While winterizing your home, you must remember about your home’s concrete surface. Home is the place where we come back after our scheduled life to get rid of all the tiredness. In winter we obviously want our house to be warm and cozy. In order to protect your house from cold, some initiative steps should be taken. If necessary steps should not be taken during winter, then your concrete floors become vulnerable. Here we are going to give you some information on how to prepare your home’s concrete surface for winter.
How to Prepare Your Home’s Concrete Surfaces for Winter
Concretes are important to save you from the cold of winter. If you are a house owner, you can start the preparations of your home’s concrete surface for winter at the end of the fall. Being the house owner you should know the importance of a house concrete. How winter can cause problem to your house concrete and know how to deal with the problems.
Causes of concrete damage in winter
Concretes can be damaged due to many reasons. Here we mentioned some of them.
- Scaling is one of the damage cause of concrete. It occurs when water seeps into the concrete. It freezes and flakes off.
- Concrete has it’s own moisture in it. But when the concrete dries, the moisture escapes.
Therefore, except above there are many other reasons that can be cause of damaging your concrete. For preparing your home’s concrete you should know how’s the condition of your concrete? In addition how to fix the problems.
How to solve the problems?
- To prepare your surface for winter, firstly you should know the current condition of your concrete. If it shows the signs of damage like crake, unevenness fix the issues as soon as possible. By repairing the problems soon, will help your concrete fix easily.
- You may notice your concrete has unevenness, you can fix that with a durable sealant. But if the crack is bigger in that case, make sure repairing that with professional help.
- If the slabs of your concrete are showing signs of damage, repair it as soon as possible.
- Sealing is one of the best way to protect concrete surface from ice and snow.
In the event of that, it was just a short discussion about what can be the causes of damaging your concrete and how should you tackle the damage.
It’s very important to protect your concrete before the weather gets cold. Protect it before it’s beyond repair.
Read: Fire Safety tips for winter
Here are some tips to follow to protect your concrete:
1. Inspect your sidewalk for cracks:
Firstly, clean the crack with a stiff brush. Then clean the area with a high pressure water hose and make sure it dries completely. After that you can move to the next step. For the next step you will need a crake filler and squeeze the filler onto the crack. Finally smooths the filler with a putty knife and let it dry.
Read: How to Clean Ice off a Sidewalk?
2. Check the concrete joints:
Expansion joints are the spaces between concrete slabs. They are purposely installed to defend the unavoidable cracking of concrete. Sometime, it becomes critical to fix the crack in the joints and also prevent from growing them. That’s how you can fix it:
- Firstly, clean the debris from the area along with high pressure water hose.
- However if the crack is small then go ahead and fill it with liquid tar.
- On the other hand, if the crack is large or deep, then you will need to fill it with window insulation.
- After that squeeze liquid tar on top of the insulation and then seal it within the joint.
The insulation will save your money in comparison of tar and both materials are flexible enough to withstand the winter.
3. Check your driveway and fill it:
If your driveway is concrete then you should inspect it in search of cracks. In case you find any then you should fill it with crack filler as soon as possible following the same method of sidewalk.
In the above, we showed you some ways of fixing the cracks of your sidewalk, driveway and joints. It doesn’t take a lot of money or effort to fix the cracks.
Read: How to de-ice your driveway?
Furthermore, we picked some FAQ questions on how to prepare your home’s concrete surface for winter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What temperature is too cold for concrete?
According to experts, 50-600 Fahrenheit is the best temperature to put concrete. So, that means above 600 Fahrenheit is too cold for a concrete. In addition if the temperature goes under 400 Fahrenheit then the concrete will much longer time to set. However, if the measures are taken perfectly concretes can be set even in the coldest months of the year.
Why does concrete rise in winter?
When the temperature drops down below 14 degrees in the new life of concrete, the crystal stops growing. Crystal growth can begin if the temperature is warm enough and above 14 degree.
How do you resurface concrete?
If your walkway isn’t cracked all the way then you can coat the slab with a concrete resurfacer. 35 square feet can be coated with one pound bag. Well before resurfacing, strip off any paint or sealers and watch the weather.
Can you pour concrete in 30 degree weather?
Concrete can be poured in cold weather, if some precautions are taken. Concrete take 5hours in 70 degrees, 10 hours in 50 degrees and it takes more than 20 hours in 30 degrees.
Can concrete cure in freezing temperatures?
Fresh concrete can freeze at 4* C. Along with that, there’s no reason to avoid pouring concrete in the cold weather if you take some precautions. Though concrete poured in the cool weather is actually stronger than concrete poured in hot weather.
Does concrete expand when cold?
Concrete does expand, when it gets hot. Again when the moisture content changes it expands. However, you need expansion joints in bridges, building and others. The expansion joints get widen in cold because of cooling contraction.
What happens if concrete freezes?
When wet concrete is placed on a cold surface, it takes more time to set. It will set more slowly. In addition, this can create cracking into the concrete.
In conclusion, today, we’ve discussed on how to prepare your home’s concrete surface for winter. We tried to show you every possible causes of damage of concrete, how to protect it and solve the problems. Hope you will be benefitted with the discussion.
Read More
- How to winterize a car
- How to keep a house warm without insulation
- How to thaw frozen water pipes
- How to prevent Frozen Pipes
- How to thaw frozen drain pipes
- How to keep pipes from freezing without heat
- How to keep pipes from freezing in crawl space
- How to keep pipes from freezing in a vacant house
- How to prepare your car for winter driving
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