Crack Injection Repair

Foundation cracks can happen for many reasons. During the construction of your home, the use of non-porous backfills like clay and organic matter will attract water over time resulting in foundation cracks during freezing and thawing; or if during the pour, the concrete was not properly cured, interrupted or not poured over properly tamped crushed stone.

Even if your foundation was built perfectly, cracks could still occur. They might be hairline cracks, diagonal cracks, or horizontal cracks. The most common suspect for cracking is plain old water. The moisture of all kinds accumulates around the foundation causing the soil to expand. Cracks appear when the expanding soil puts pressure on the foundation walls and footings. Over time you may also spot hairline cracks, which are often harmless but should be monitored to ensure proper structural integrity.

One solution is called crack injections, where we fill the cracks with fast-curing epoxy. We begin the process by examining the crack which needs to be repaired in the foundation wall.

Next, we mark any areas on the wall where the crack is not continuous. Laying down plastic material to keep our work area clean, we immediately begin working on cleaning the crack with a wire brush. In the areas where we see continuous cracks, we mark port locations every 18″ starting from the bottom of the crack up to the top. For discontinuous cracks we mark the port locations just above the discontinuous crack and space the remaining ports every 8″ from the discontinuous locations.

Next, we begin the port installation. We detach the port cap from the side of the port and set it aside. We then dispense a small amount of fast-curing epoxy onto a disposable work surface. The entire flat edge of the port is then rolled into the fast curing epoxy and pressed firmly over the crack at the marked locations. Following the port process, we fix the rest of the crack by applying the fast-curing epoxy over the entire crack. We then feather the epoxy approximately 2″ or more on both sides of the crack.

Lastly, we apply the epoxy around the entire port at the port locations until the port base is no longer visible. With an epoxy gun, we start at the bottom port and dispense resin into the port until the resin is visibly coming out. With a two cartridge gun, we start at the bottom most port and dispense a quick reacting polyurethane until it starts to come out of the next port. This process is repeated up the wall until the entire crack has been sealed. When the epoxy has completely dried, we knock the ports off the wall using a hammer.