Originally Posted by
francophile
Before you get there, now would be a good time (temps permitting!) to seal up those cracks with self-leveling sealant. Doing this on the small crack across my basement slab dropped the humidity in the room 10-20% and my dehumidifier only runs a couple of hours a month versus a couple hours per day.
Product I used is by Sikaflex is sold at Home Depot and others and is here for like $9/tube:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Sikaflex...6110/300934565
It's self leveling and flexes with contraction/expansion - install is absurdly easy, just take a chisel and chip out the edges of the crack to make a V trough. Then squirt this stuff liberally down the trough, it'll sink in the crack and level out within1-2mm of the surface.
Actually wouldn't be a bad idea to go ahead and surface the top of it, don't they make a scrubby pad for that?
Thank you. Noted, and I will follow up on that suggestion.
I'm definitely planning on doing something with the cracks in the slab, although it's probably not going to be done until the outer shell is finished. While we've had a gorgeous 75 degree weekend, and the next couple of days are going to stay in the mid-50's, it is still winter in central Virginia, and I'm probably not going to get anything done on the floor until early March. My repair crew is one incredibly talented gentleman who's doing everything by himself. He will have help on the big stuff. He's good enough that I'm already lining up a couple of other jobs on the house for him over the next 24 months once this is taken care of and all the bills are paid. Rough schedule at present is Jan-Feb to erect the garage, then I spend March finishing the inside. Paneling the inside walls in OSB, trim (windows and baseboard), finish the floor, lay in a storage space in the rafters, build my workbench (most likely going to base it on some kitchen cabinets), and route piping for the air compressor on the walls with hose outlets. Then, I start shopping for equipment.
Pleasant surprise for the moment: Dropped down to my local Harbor Freight and picked up one of those US General small rolling 5-drawer tool chests to move into my current temporary shop for a working tool chest. Quality of the chest is excellent, much better than the (admittedly low end) Craftsman chests I lost in the fire. Definitely going that route on the big one for the shop - just have to decide which size.