Remove loose material and create a shelf on both sides of the joint with a minimum profile of 1.5” deep and 2” wide on each side. Vacuum and thoroughly remove dust and contaminates.
Create a repair base by filling repair area halfway to grade with bulk mixed 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ combined with 10-20 grit silica sand.
Use a ratio of 1 Part mixed Concrete Mender to 2 parts silica sand. Up to 1/2 part additional sand may be added during application to assist with troweling and placement. Be sure to leave the lower half surface rough and sand covered to accept the next layer.
EXAMPLE
1 Qt side A,
1 Qt Side B,
4 Qts 10-20 silica sand,
Up to 1 quart additional sand as needed.
Once the first layer sets and turns grey, continue with an additional layer up to flush with the surface.
The mixed material should always be resin rich and the sand should be fully saturated when applying to the repair area.
For extra surface strength, 30 grit aluminum oxide may be broadcast and troweled in place on top as the materials start to gel in about 5 minutes after placement. Allow to fully cure and grind flush within 24 hours. OPTIONAL: Re-saw the contraction join
Here is the Roadware Concrete Mender One Page Pitch. Things you need to know when considering, recommending, specifying, and using Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™
Roadware stands ready to supply immediate concrete repair needs for warehouses, cold chain logistics, manufacturing, and supply. Repairs can be made with almost no downtime and under operational conditions. Please call 1-800-522-7623 or 1-651-457-6122 to be connected with our worldwide network of distributors waiting to assist. Or, send email to sales@concretemender.com
We ask that visitors to Roadware Headquarters in South St Paul, MN, or any of our Roadware Distributors, call the location ahead to verify operating hours and local conditions.
AGV’s or Automated Guided Vehicles are the reliable workhorses of the modern warehouse. They are designed to run smoothly and predictably all day and everyday. AGV’s are great at repetitive tasks moving freight as needed day in and day out. These repeated trips over the same path can be very punishing to concrete floors. The small hard wheels of an AVG can crush control joint sidewalls and grind the concrete surface to dust. This leads to rough, uneven floors that can cause premature breakdowns of AGV drive systems, wheels, and even damaged freight.
“If your AVG could talk, it would ask for Concrete Mender. ” Richard King, Roadware, Inc.
AGV’s move thousands of pounds in a single trip over the exact same path hundreds of times per day.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender with Microdoweling™ penetrates into concrete surfaces repairs concrete cracks, joints and spalls where others fail. Over the years we have noticed some conditions needed for successful repairs in the path of AVG’s.
Repairs need to be as tough as the concrete itself. But not too tough. Let’s say your concrete is a typical 4000 psi in compressive strength. The AGV wheels are grinding away the surface of the concrete and spalling the control joints. You repair the “bad” sections of the path with fairly brittle 10,000 psi epoxy. Now you have sections of the original concrete and sections of much harder epoxy. As the original concrete continues to grind away, the hard epoxy remains and you just created more speed bumps for the AVGs. Concrete Mender will wear with the concrete and deflect with the concrete under load. Your AVG’s favorite path will be smoother longer.
Stop your repairs from popping out. Did you ever notice common warehouse floor repairs popping out in chunks? This can happen when you put a super hard epoxy patch in a not as hard concrete floor. The epoxy is so brittle that it fractures the bond-line when a load is applied. Epoxy repair products have a modulus of elasticity that is so high, it will fracture the concrete before deflecting under load. Concrete Mender has a modulus of elasticity that is slightly less than concrete so it will deflect with concrete concrete under load and gently transfer load from the repair to the surrounding concrete.
Time is money! Closing down aisles or sections of a warehouse is a disruption for everyone including AVG’s. With minimal prep requirements and less invasive techniques including Roadware Easy Injection, 10 Minute Concrete Mender can have your AVG pathways back in service in minutes, not hours or days. You can even make repairs in operational freezers down to -30F.
Concrete repairs for AGV’s need to bond under heavy traffic as well as deflect with the concrete and transfer loads to the surrounding concrete without fracturing.
AVG’s like to take the same path every time. This can prematurely wear out concrete floors. The drive system in a typical AGV can haul a lot of weight, but the floor needs to be smooth. Warehouse and AGV floors can be repaired and open for traffic in about 10 minutes after application with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender.
A 24″ deep core sample shows 100% injection repair with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender.
For many years, engineers have looked for ways to fully inject repair polymers into cracked concrete structures. The general consensus is to seal off the crack with a sacrificial epoxy and install injection ports every few inches. Then thick epoxy is injected under high pressure into the crack with expensive resin injection pumps. The process is time-consuming, the epoxy is brittle, the equipment is expensive and the skill level is highly specialized. This makes epoxy injection slow, expensive and not really effective in the field.
At Roadware, we look for ways to make concrete repair fast, effective and easy.
Fast is better. When injecting Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender into concrete, the fast gel and cure time allows you to make a full depth repair from the bottom of the crack up to the top. If the crack you are injecting has a large hidden void, Concrete Mender repairs will start to gel and plug up the void in several minutes. Injection epoxy that takes several hours to cure will sink to the bottom of your crack and pool in the base before it has a chance to cure.
Effective. Concrete Mender is a Structural Polyurethane**. It is about as hard as typical concrete with much greater tensile and bonding strength. It is super thin at 8cps with a surface tension 1/3 of water. It can to penetrate concrete cracks and surfaces. Concrete Mender does not need to be forced into cracks with high pressure pumps and extraordinary methods. Concrete Mender can easily flow into cracks and fissures with just simple manual tools and a specially designed application mixer. You can repair more cracks in less time with less waste then ever before. Repairs are structural in nature and will move with the concrete, not against it like very hard epoxies.
Easy Application. For a repair to be effective in the field, it has to be simple enough for crews to apply efficiently. Installation productivity saves money.
Diagram showing Concrete Mender Soft-tip mixer injection into a concrete slab.
To start, simply drill a 3/8″ diameter hole about one inch deep into the crack at several points along the crack. Clean the crack and holes with a vacuum.* (Click here to learn how to work safely around silica dust).
Tape off the top of the crack and around the holes you just drilled with clear duct tape or Gorilla Clear Repair Tape. These tapes have a good adhesive that will stick to the surrounding concrete. Do not use packing tape or other tapes without testing them first.
Assemble a cartridge of Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender using out specially designed Soft-tip static mixer. Purge the cartridge of air as directed and insert nozzle into the first hole you drilled earlier.
Gently squeeze the handle of the gun and slowly inject Concrete Mender into the crack. Work product into several holes at a time, moving the cartridge back and forth among them. Allow time for the Concrete Mender to start gelling in the bottom of the crack. As the crack starts to fill completely, you will see Concrete Mender flow under the clear tape from one drilled hole to the other. You may see air bubbling up from one hole as you inject Concrete Mender into adjacent holes.
Once the crack is filled to refusal, move on to the next few drilled holes until the whole crack is filled.
After 10 minutes at 70 degrees or 23 C, pull the tape. You can use a razor scraper, grinder or polishing device to remove and excess material and blend in the repair.
Drilling a pilot hole into a crack to prepare for injection with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender.
A pilot hole drilled into a concrete crack and ready for injection with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender. Clear repair tape temporarily seals the crack while being repaired.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is slowly injected into the crack using a Soft-tip sealing mixer.
Inject Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender into the crack until the product appears under the tape. This repairs the crack from the bottom up. Work several holes at a time allowing the product to gel and seal the bottom as you go.
Slowly injecting Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender into 24″ of concrete using 600ml cartridge and soft-tip injection mixers.
Core drilling of the repair shows full depth repair down 24 inches using this method.
The core sample shows full depth repair down 24 inches.
Concrete Mender repair shown under UV light. See how the Concrete Mender flows into the smallest cracks and brings the concrete back to a pre-cracked condition.
Using Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender and Soft-tip injection mixers, you can structurally repair concrete cracks and delaminations with simple tools and methods. This unique system saves time and money and allow for a high production rate for installers. The drill hole/inject method is much less invasive than traditional cut and fill methods and creates a lot less silica dust on the jobsite. The Microdoweling properties of Concrete Mender and Soft-tip Injection promises to be a winning combination for tough concrete repair challenges.
1006-STR 24-element static mixer with Easy Injection Tip
1006-STR 24-element static mixer with Easy Injection Tip
*“Workers may be exposed to dangerous levels of silica dust when cutting, drilling, grinding, or otherwise disturbing materials that contain silica. These materials and tasks are common on construction jobs. Breathing that dust can lead to serious, often fatal illnesses.” The Center for Construction Research and Training. Click here to learn how to work safely with silica.
** Structural Polyurethane: A polyurethane based material that restores structural integrity and aggregate interlock to distressed concrete by using low surface tension and low viscosity to penetrate concrete surfaces and cross-linking polymer chains to bond directly to the concrete-aggregate matrix. This bonding action utilizes capillary forces to self-inject polymer chains into the surrounding concrete. This material should have a modulus of elasticity less than the surrounding concrete and should not become brittle over time. This material may be combined with manufactured sand to form a PCC compatible polymer concrete that can structurally repair concrete cracks and spalls.
Pool spalls are cleaned and prepared for repair with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender.
What do you do when your pool has cracks and spalls and it has to be open is three days? Back in 2001, the City of South Saint Paul, Minnesota had a problem with their new splash pool. Just before opening the pool for its second season, cracks and spalls were discovered in the concrete pool bottom and along corner where the floor meets the wall. The damaged was probably caused by the first Minnesota winter for this neighborhood splash pool facility. The repairs needed to be done fast. The pool was scheduled to be open in just three days. Any delay would be a disappointment for local families and political problem for the City who spent a lot of money to build this water recreation facility.
The call went out to see if anyone could come up with a solution. Roadware Incorporated, also located in the City of South Saint Paul, received a call from the Parks and Recreation Maintenance Department to see if we had any ideas. It turns out, Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ is a great product for repairing concrete pools. The cross-linked polyurethanes in Concrete Mender and very resistant to water, chlorine and other pool chemicals.
Roadware personnel were at the pool within a few hours and repairs were made using a mixture of Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender and manufactured sand.
Mixing 10 Minute Concrete Mender with sand in a bucket prior to repairing a spall in the concrete pool floor.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is flooded into the spalled ares and seeded with manufactured sand.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender and sand are applied to spalls in the pool floor.
The Concrete Mender and sand bland can be troweled in place and will cure in about 10 minutes.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender mixed with sand is troweled into place.
Vertical surfaces can be repaired by mixing Concrete Mender with fine manufactured sand and troweled in place.
Pool repairs at the pool edge are made with Concrete Mender mixed with sand and troweled in place.
Repairs can be painted using standard methods in 10 minutes after application at 70 degrees F (23C).
Finished repairs were ready for paint in minutes.
All the repairs took just a few hours to complete and the pool was ready for a fresh coat of paint in minutes. The pool was painted and filled with water the next day. The Concrete Mender repairs have largely been forgotten, but continue to perform to this day.
The South Saint Paul Splash Pool in 2017. Concrete Mender repairs in the pool still look good 16 years later.
The Milan-Malpensa MXP International Airport in Ferno, Italy handles nearly 20 million passengers per year and over 500,000 tons of international freight annually. Crews are using Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ to repair cracks in taxiways. The deep penetration of Concrete Mender and the 10 minute cure helps keep the historic airport running at top efficiency.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ is a tough high penetration polyurethane quickly soaks into small cracks and repairs them before they become big problems.
The MXP Airport saves time and money by repairing cracks early when they are small. The Concrete Mender cures in just 10 minutes. This is perfect for repairing taxiways that have to remain open 24 hours per day.
Crews use Concrete Mender supplied in self-mixing 600ml cartridges to quickly apply material exactly where it is needed. No material is wasted. Manufactured sand is added to extend the product volume and control how much Concrete Mender flows into the crack.
Repairs are ready for airport service in about 10 minutes at 70 degrees F (23C).
The Microdoweling™ action of Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ can structurally, “glue” concrete back together. Pictured here is a concrete break-out caused by a forklift hitting an anchored steel bollard.
Anchored post hit with forklift causing damage to floor.
Concrete Mender™ was used to re-attach the broken concrete piece and repair the crack.
Damaged floor anchoring steel post is repaired and loose concrete piece re-attached with Concrete Mender™.
After about 10 minutes, the repair was buffed smooth and open for traffic.
Concrete Mender™ repair is buffed smooth and ready for service.
About a week later, the bollard was again hit with a forklift and at the same angle. The repaired concrete held in place. The concrete broke on the other side of the bollard this time. Concrete Mender can’t stop forklifts from hitting bollards. It can help minimize the damage and make lasting repairs.
Concrete Mender floor repair one week after installation. The steel post was hit again with a forklift and is still holding in place.
