Your Concrete Project Needs Cement Paint
The concrete is amazing. All you have to do is look at ancient Roman ruins to see just how durable, flexible and strong concrete can be as a building material. However, this can lead to a moment of mental dissonance when your steps on the street crumble to dust, and the 2000-year-old Pantheon in Rome still looks pretty solid. And it gets even worse when you bravely try to repair cracked, crumbling concrete and it lasts a hot minute before falling apart.
If your experience with concrete repairs around your home always ends up with repairs mostly breaking down, you’re almost certainly missing out on one key ingredient that no one ever tells you about: cement paint.
Why Your Concrete Repair Is Doomed to Fail
Concrete is strong and durable, but it doesn’t stick well to things and certainly doesn’t stick to itself . Your concrete repair, whether you’re using pre-mixed repair material or mixing your own Portland cement mix, always fails because you’re just slapping concrete on top of concrete, i.e. just laying chunks of concrete on top. each other. There is no “hook” between the layers, so the repair will break quite easily. This may take a while depending on conditions, but is guaranteed to fail sooner rather than later.
What is cement paint?
To make your concrete repair durable, you need to provide some sort of bond between the two layers of concrete. There are a few different ways to achieve this, but they all basically work in the same way: you “apply” a layer of binder to the area of concrete in need of repair, then apply fresh concrete to fill in the cracks and voids. Creating a “cement paint” that will serve as a link between the layers of concrete can be done in several ways:
- premixed product. For most small repairs, it’s easiest to buy glue from the store. It can be applied directly to the repair with a brush or roller, and concrete can be applied over it. You can also purchase acrylic concrete products that you mix directly into the mix, making it stiffer and giving it more adhesion.
- Concrete solution. Mortar is a very thin, viscous mixture of Portland cement (or the concrete you use for repairs) and water. You don’t have to be too careful with your measurements; you just want the mixture to have the consistency of a thick soup. Moisten the damaged area with a little water and apply the mortar to the repair site, filling any cracks and crevices so that it can bond effectively to the fresh concrete.
- Combination. When mixing concrete mortar, you can replace glue with water . You still want the same thick consistency, but adding a bonding adhesive can make the mortar more viscous and really strengthen the bond between the original concrete and the fresh repair material.
One thing to keep in mind is that whenever you’re bonding concrete, you’ll need to properly prepare the site first. This always includes cleaning the area of debris and dirt, and if the area has absorbed oil, paint, or other material that the concrete will never bond to, you need to physically remove the affected areas. If you are using some kind of pre-mixed binder, read the instructions – you may need to roughen the surface or wet it with water before applying.
If you just don’t like mixing concrete and sculpting it onto things, you want your renovations to last. If you take the time to prepare the site and use some type of cement paint, repairing broken or crumbling concrete will be much more efficient and durable.