Concrete undersealing information

Helping you learn more about concrete restoration and concrete repair.

Concrete Undersealing is not unlike slab-jacking, in that it involves pumping material underneath a concrete slab to achieve a similar goal. The difference is, where slab-jacking is used to lift a sinking slab, undersealing is used to fill in pits and cracks on the bottom of the slab that have been eroded away.

Have you ever thought of what it must be like to be a concrete slab? Probably not, but think about it for a minute. Thousands of people walking on you every year, sitting out in the hot sun, and beneath freezing snow, people pulling heavy objects over you, it’s really quite a task to hold that much weight all the time. With this type of punishment being dealt out so often, it’s not surprising that damage will run deep and serious with a little age. Very often, you’ll see pits and fissures form, not only on the surface, but on the underside as well.

There are a few options for this. You can tear out the concrete and replace it all, hope that its not too serious and just do surface work, or underseal it. Undersealing it will be less costly, and less time consuming, and once the process is finished, you can do any surface work you wish, usually conveniently by the same people. It won’t interrupt the area for a couple weeks as replacing the slab might. Also, if serious surface work is also needed, then you won’t have to worry about adding lots of new weight and sinking the slab further, as you’ve already reliably lifted it.

This isn’t like the asphalt you’ll see in the street. It’s actually more like motor or grout. When it is in liquid form (and it is very much a liquid) it is at very high temperature, higher then most asphalt. (Around 400ｺF) and seeps into every hole, crack, fissure, or pit in the underside of the concrete in order to prevent further damage.

The need for this kind of service should be checked for often, as if the damage becomes too great, concrete undersealing won’t be very effective, and you may need to simply remove the entire slab.

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