Concrete waterproofing
Keeping water out of concrete, and stopping vapor moving up through a slab into your finish floor.
The build-up, step by step
Every waterproofing job Shanks installs follows the same order, because skipping a stage is how floors fail. Taylor is on site for all of it.
Find the water
Vapor through the slab, liquid at a cold joint and surface runoff are three different problems with three different fixes.
Test
Calcium chloride or relative humidity probes for slab moisture; a direct look at the source for anything liquid.
Treat
A vapor-reducing membrane for slab moisture, crystalline or injection repair for a moving joint, penetrating sealers for surface absorption.
Verify
Retest before the finish floor goes down, rather than hoping.
Right room, right system
Basement slabs before flooring, garages with efflorescence, and any slab where a previous floor failed for no obvious reason.
Where it is the wrong call
Bulk water entering through walls or footings. That is drainage and grading work.
Back in service: Membranes accept finish flooring in one to two days.
Compare the other systems
Why this floor costs what it costs
The square footage is the easy part. What changes a quote from one job to the next is almost always the condition of the slab underneath:
Condition of the slab
A clean, sound slab grinds in a morning. One carrying old paint, carpet glue, or a failed coating can take a full day longer before anything can be applied.
How much repair it needs
Cracks, spalled edges, pitting and old anchor holes are filled and ground flush before coating. A slab that needs a lot of this can add a day on its own.
Access
A walk-out basement with a door at grade is straightforward. Carrying equipment down a flight of stairs, or working around a building that has to stay open, adds time.
Which system you choose
Build thickness and the chemistry of the topcoat are the two biggest material costs. A heavier commercial build genuinely costs more than a residential one.
What Alabama slabs do
Newer construction around Trussville, Chelsea and Springville is usually a clean, flat pour that takes a coating beautifully, as long as the concrete has had its twenty-eight days. Coating green concrete is one of the few genuinely unfixable mistakes in this trade.
Alabama humidity is the quiet variable in this work. Resin cures on a temperature and dew-point window, so a floor is scheduled around the weather rather than squeezed in before a storm rolls over Talladega.
Where the trailer goesWhat the days actually look like
Knowing the shape of the week takes most of the worry out of it. A typical job runs like this:
Watching the weather
Outdoor work runs on the forecast. Resin cures on a temperature and dew-point window, so a job gets moved rather than gambled when rain is coming.
Clearing the area
Furniture, planters and grills come off the slab. Anything that has been sitting in one place for years has usually left a mark that needs treating.
Prep day
Cleaning, grinding and crack repair. Outdoor slabs almost always need more repair than indoor ones because of what winter does to them.
Back in use
Foot traffic the next day, furniture back at about three days, and the full cure across the following week.
Keeping it looking new
A slab moisture membrane lives under the finish floor and is never seen again, so there is nothing to clean or reseal. The maintenance is all upstream: keep gutters clear, keep grading falling away from the foundation, and have any new flooring installer confirm the membrane before they glue anything down, since a fastener through it is the only thing that undoes the work.
Anything Taylor installs comes with a walk-through at handover covering exactly this, plus what to avoid in the first two weeks while the coating reaches full hardness. If something does go wrong later, tell him about it rather than living with it.
The owner is the installer
Shanks Concrete Coatings is Taylor and Heather Shanks, working out of Anniston. Taylor trained directly with Brian Phillips, The Epoxy Dude, in southern Indiana, and he runs the grinder and pulls the squeegee on every job himself. Licensed and insured, Alabama #2602341.
If a waterproofing floor is not the right answer for your room, he will tell you that on the first visit rather than sell it to you. More about how Shanks works, or send over the details of your floor.
Waterproofing questions
How do I know my slab has moisture?
White powder on the surface, a dark patch that never dries, glue that stays tacky, or a coating that let go in one area. Testing turns those hints into a number.
Can a coating just go over it?
A standard coating over a wet slab will be pushed off. Vapor pressure is stronger than the bond, which is why testing comes before quoting.
Does this fix a leaking basement wall?
No. That is exterior drainage or an interior drain system. Slab treatment handles what comes up through the floor.
Is it worth doing preventatively?
On a below-grade slab about to receive an expensive floor, a moisture test is cheap insurance.
Do you do the testing before quoting?
Yes, and it is the only honest way to quote this work. A calcium chloride or relative humidity test takes a couple of days to run and it decides whether the floor needs a mitigating primer or nothing at all.
Four questions worth asking any installer
Ask these of Shanks and of whoever else you are talking to. The answers separate a floor that lasts from one that looks good for a season, and a straight installer will not mind being asked.
How are you preparing the slab?
The only acceptable answers involve a diamond grinder or a shot blaster. Acid etching and a scrub with degreaser is not preparation, and it is the single most common reason a coating lets go.
Are you testing for moisture?
On any basement or ground-level slab this should be a yes with a number attached. Vapor pressure will push a coating off no matter how good the product is.
Who is actually on my floor?
Worth asking whoever quotes you. With Shanks the person who quotes it is the person who grinds it and coats it, and that is not true everywhere.
What is the topcoat?
A UV-stable polyaspartic or aliphatic urethane holds its color. A cheap job leaves a standard epoxy as the top layer, and it will amber in daylight within a year or two.
Other systems for the same room
Waterproofing is one of twenty-two systems Shanks installs. If the room is telling you something different, these are the closest alternatives, and Taylor will happily point you at the cheaper one if it is the right answer.
Patio Coatings
Another system Shanks installs across the same sixty-mile area.
Concrete Sealing
Another system Shanks installs across the same sixty-mile area.
Terrace Restoration
Another system Shanks installs across the same sixty-mile area.
Tell Taylor about your floor
Square footage, what the room is used for, and what the slab looks like now. That is enough to get you a real number on waterproofing.