What cement product should I use to fix a hole in my slab?

Question

I was removing old thinset and self-leveling cement in an area in preparation to tile it when the 6" chisel and demo hammer I was using sunk in to a specific spot. I found that this specific spot had been filled with debris and had about 1" of cement poured on top of it. Quite obviously, this wasn't sufficient, and the end result was a series of cracks in this area and a hollow sound here. I removed the debris and was left with about a 2' by 3' hole. It's obvious that someone made a (bad) patch here in the past. There was even a discarded bandaid wrapper and fibers from orange shag carpeting in the hole.

There's no plumbing that I can find below and the plastic 6mil vapor barrier is in good condition with a few minor tears that could be repaired with tuck tape. There are two roots running below; they are rotting and probably belong to something long dead. There is a crack running from the door to the right of the picture to the hole. I plan to repair this crack at the same time by broadening and deepening the crack slightly and using a cement patching compound.

What product should I use to fill the larger hole? Plain ol' Quickrete, or some other form of cement? Aggregate or not? Any specific PSI ratings I should look for, or other prep work that I should do besides washing the areas that I hope the new concrete will bond to and making sure that there's enough clearance under the wire for the cement to engage it?

Answer 1

I would be more concerned that your wire looks to be at the very bottom of the concrete, making it useless. Concrete is very strong under compression but very weak under flex. The steel is there to take the flex and should be about center of the concrete. Definitely use a concrete bonding agent and Ditra. The Ditra will provide enough of a barrier that the cracks should not come through. Personally I would not put a huge pile of money into tile considering it might end up cracking

Answer 2

Ok, I went to the big blue box store, read every bag they had there, and answered my own question.

As Cory (properly) pointed out, the mesh in the bottom of the hole isn't doing much good. It seems that this is a 'peak' in the sand that forms the substrate for my foundation; the sand slopes downhill to a depth of about ten inches on either side. I'm not sure why it's built this way, but as I can't really fix it now without doing a lot more work that I don't want to do to the vapor barrier and other aspects, I levered up the wire so that I could fit stones underneath it and there's now about 1/2 to 3/4 inch clearance between the wire and the bottom of the Chasm.

I just finished scrubbing it down with water and will let it dry overnight, and then tomorrow when I'm ready to mix I'll apply a primer that should help the concrete adhere.

I purchased this bag of fiber-reinforced high strength quickrete because over an area of the slab the size I'm patching, it shouldn't need to interact with the wire mesh much to gain the strength that I'm looking for. The sand should keep it from sinking any, and even if it cracks around the edge, it won't have much of a place to go given what will be paved over it when the DITRA gets installed.

Answer 3

My garage floor was not prepared property , I was not tamped before pouring thus a space between dirt and cement thus cracking because no suport. Dug out old concreat where there was cracks I then placed gravel under the existing cement and jammed with a stick best I could then levelled ground in hole filled with rocks inch in diameter then drilled holes in face of concreat and inserted rebar leaving space between rocks and rebar then filled with sakcreat 7000 mixing not to sloppy when finish concreat should be good for 52000 pounds made level with exiting concreat,now it might form a crack if so use a self levelling crack filler sparingly it very tough stuff