Basement Slab Eval?
Anyone who has gone through this before…. In the context of a partial gut rehab we had to pull tile up in our basement, which has a poured slab. The existing tile was poorly leveled, so it had to go. When pulling up the tile a few bad spots (looked like moisture) emerged which we…
Anyone who has gone through this before….
In the context of a partial gut rehab we had to pull tile up in our basement, which has a poured slab. The existing tile was poorly leveled, so it had to go. When pulling up the tile a few bad spots (looked like moisture) emerged which we cleaned up and patched with some new concrete.
So far, so good, except a lot of the slab sounds as if it has water or air under it when you stomp on it…there’s a hollowness to it. We’re trying to figure out if we need to break it up, cart it off and get a new slab poured, but we want to avoid it if at all possible…it’s not green and the mess and expense is considerable.
Part of me just wants to pour on a few bags of self-levelling cement and call it a day, as clearly it has been like this for a long time and didn’t break, but I would like someone to evaluate it. We don’t have a GC, and I have the feeling any concrete or foundation contractor is going to say to break it up and pour a new slab..surgeons like removing things. Does anyone have a recommendation for someone to evaluate the slab that’s there and advise about the sanity of tiling over it?
For what it’s worth, the basement doesn’t seem to have a moisture problem, with one exception which has been repaired.
I had a similar situation in my basement, and ended up demolishing the old slab and pouring a new one. We had a small area demolished first to confirm the diagnosis. If your basement ceiling is rather low, this is also an opportunity to excavate and raise it – we dug out an extra 6″.
jb312 – can you share who you used and how much it cost? this is on the “extended list” for us.
I had a similar issue – dry basement, but flaking, barely level slab, with lots of hollow patches. Our home inspector suggested redoing it, and a mason we had in the house doing other work did the same. Couple estimate and brownstoner due diligence suggested that our mason was giving a good price, so we just hacked it out and poured a fresh slab. Despite getting advice to undergo significant surgery from surgeons, it felt right, and in fact it turned out that the original slab was really poorly done – thin, no reinforcement, etc. We’re very happy with the work and having a much more usable space, but it wasn’t cheap.
I agree with Jock. Is it something you think you and a sledgehammer can handle in one area? I wouldn’t pour anything on top until I found out what’s going on underneath. That’s just putting a band aid on it and it may come back to haunt you. Then think of how ungreen, messy and expensive it would be to pull up old and new concrete.
Break up an area you are concerned about and see what is under it. There are companies that will core drill the slab and pump in a waterproofing clay, but that is usually when you have water infiltration.