Concrete slab floors that are older than thirty years are often cracked, lifted up or sunken down and are generally in all-around bad shape. While you could hire a concrete contractor to lift the broken pieces of slab from underneath, it may be better to pull it all up and redo the garage floor. This time, be sure to ask your contractor for post tensioning. It is a newer process that can prevent the problems the old slab floor had and extend the life of the new garage floor. Here is more on how your garage floor can be even better with the post tension technique.
Post Tensioning Prevents Sinking and Shifting
The post tensioning process reinforces the new concrete slab from underneath. Instead of pouring the slab over just leveled soil, the steel cabling and plastic ductwork provides a very firm support for the slab. This is especially important if your old garage rests on very soft soil or sandy soil that has a tendency to shift and sink under the weight of structures, like your garage. This is also important to the garage itself, since a lack of sinking and shifting of the slab floor means that the rest of the structure does not tilt, lean, buckle or collapse.
Steel Cables Pulled Taut Keep Broken Slabs Together
Farther on down the line, the concrete in your new garage floor could crack. It may take a few decades, but eventually it will wear down. If you live in a colder region of the U.S., this will happen because of the constant freezing and thawing processes surrounding the garage floor and the soil underneath the post tension grid. If the contractor has done an excellent job of the post tensioning technique, the very tight steel cables will actually hold the broken and/or cracked areas of the slab foundation tightly together. If the concrete were on soil alone, the pieces would just slip and fall away from each other. Instead the post tensioning grid underneath holds everything together and on perfect edge with itself.
The Concrete Slab Can Bear Greater Weight
Because of the dynamics and engineering of the post tensioning technique, the concrete slab over the top of it can bear more weight that just the poured slab alone. Now, if you want to store a six-ton vehicle or construction vehicle in your garage, the concrete will hold up because of the tension grid. If a slab extends across a three-stall garage, you can put three heavy vehicles on top of that slab, no problem.
For more information, contact a company like Advanced Post-Tension, LLC.
Share29 April 2017
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