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New Full-depth Hairline Crack Injection Breaks the Rules
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ and Easy-injection mixers make full-depth crack repairs in hairline cracks without cutting. This less evasive crack repair technique breaks the rules for concrete repair.
Broken Rule One Hairline cracks are not worth the trouble fixing.
Broken Rule Two  You have to cut open a hairline crack if you want to actually repair it.
Broken Rule Three Crack injection requires pumps, ports, slow epoxy, and lots of time.
Let’s look at these “rules” one by one.Â
Broken Rule One: Hairline cracks are often dismissed as not worth fixing. However, it’s important to note that almost every concrete crack starts as a hairline crack. Some of these cracks are so tiny that they are not visible to the naked eye.
Cracking naturally occurs in concrete slabs as the concrete cures and shrinks. We use saw-cut control joints to guide the concrete to crack inside the designated joints, but sometimes the concrete cracks in unexpected places. We wish there were an efficient way to fix hairline cracks, but for now, we generally ignore them and attribute them to the nature of concrete. We might reassure customers by saying, “It will be fine; you still have aggregate interlock, and the crack is just on the surface,” or “All concrete cracks, and it’s just the nature of the product.” Unfortunately, customers who have invested in a new concrete floor are usually dissatisfied with these explanations.
The truth is, we would fix hairline cracks if there were a good and efficient way to do it.
Broken Rule Two: You have to cut open crack if you really want to repair it. A repair material has to actually get into a crack so it will actually do some good. Anything short of that is no better than caulk. For the most part, this is true. We can’t repair what we can’t reach. Traditional cut and cover techniques us a diamond blade saw to open up a crack, forming a shallow well for Concrete Mender to accumulate and flow down into the crack. It works really well, and Roadware has been doing it for over twenty years.
What is needed is a way to actively push repair products into hairline cracks. Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender can do the job with simple techniques and Easy Injection Mixers. That brings us to:
Broken Rule Three:Â Crack injection requires pumps, ports, slow epoxy, and lots of time.Â
For a successful crack injection repair you need to accomplish three things:
- Delivery of materials to the repair area.
- The repair material needs to set before if flows away from the repair area .
- The repair has to be structurally effective.
The Roadware Easy Injection mixers make it easy to fill cracks as small as 20 mil (0.02 inches) with Concrete Mender. Simply drill a 3/8-inch hole into the crack and then push the almost-water-thin Concrete Mender into the cracks. You can see the Concrete Mender flow along the entire length of the hairline crack. You won’t need expensive injection pumps for this – just a cartridge of Concrete Mender and a manual application gun.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender starts to thicken and cure in about 5 minutes after application, so the material will stay where you put it. Traditional injection epoxies take hours to cure. In many cases, at the end of the day, the epoxy all ends up under the slab and no longer in the crack.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ with Microdoweling™ penetrates traditional bond lines and repairs concrete from the inside out. This structural polyurethane will not become brittle over time. Epoxy injection resins become very hard and brittle. As the concrete deflects under traffic, the brittle epoxy will start grinding away at the bond-line and the deterioration will start all over again. Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is designed to restore aggregate interlock and deflect with the concrete under heavy traffic and loading. This structural polyurethane will not become brittle over time and is designed to bring the cracked concrete back to original pre-cracked condition.
Getting Started
Bridge crack repair in the Philippines.
Make Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender part of your bridge preventative maintenance program. Repair cracks as they develop when they are small. Don’t let small cracks turn into big problems. Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ is extremely tough and will withstand even the harshest punishment. Use all year long… may be applied at temperatures as low as -20° F with excellent results.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is great repairing surface cracks in a bridge deck. The flow-and-go application along with the 10 minute cure time allow repair crews to get on and off the bridge quickly. Traffic can be returned to the bridge in just 10 minutes after application. In the Philippines, crews often work at night when traffic is low and working conditions are cooler.
Crews work in teams. One person shoots the Concrete Mender from 600ml cartridges, one person applies filler sand, and one person trowels the repair smooth.
Workers repairing cracks in the Bantum Bridge in the Philippines using Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender.
What are the reasons DOT’s Roadware?
1) “Safety for the driving public.” Roadware repairs are ready for traffic in 10 minutes. Lane closure time is dramatically reduced.
2) “Safety for my crew.” The interstate is a dangerous work environment, the quicker repairs are made, the less exposure to the hazards of working on a heavily traveled interstate.
3) “Saves a lot of money.” Quick cure times, easy mixing, straight forward application, and good long term performance makes Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender a good value. After a few days of training, the crew was able to repair a bridge in half a day. One district in Wisconsin saved about $1500 per bridge over conventional repair methods. No overnight lane closures are needed and crews are more productive with less equipment requirements.
Full Depth Crack Injection with 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. Â
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.
- 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.
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.
*“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.
Emergency Repair at Service Station with Concrete Mender
Bill Neal of Neals Design recently repaired spalled and cracked concrete on the fly at a service station in Washington. Â A customer had broken an ankle stepping out of a truck into the badly spalled concrete. Bill was able to make the repair in minutes, eliminating the safety hazard without major disruption to the service station.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is your go to product for making long-lasting repairs with minimal downtime. Â At 70 degrees F Â or 21C, A Concrete Mender repair can be ready for heavy truck traffic in about 10 minutes.
The ultra low viscosity Concrete Mender mixes very easily with manufactured sand or quartz.  A tough and durable polymer concrete mortar can be mixed in a bucket by hand with simple tools. No expensive pumps or power mixers needed. See how it is done here. Concrete Mender™ Bulk Application Instructions
Product used:
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ Two-gallon Kit #80020
Swimming Pool Repair with 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.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is flooded into the spalled ares and seeded with manufactured sand.
The Concrete Mender and sand bland can be troweled in place and will cure in about 10 minutes.
Vertical surfaces can be repaired by mixing Concrete Mender with fine manufactured sand and troweled in place.
Repairs can be painted using standard methods in 10 minutes after application at 70 degrees F (23C).
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.
Products:
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™
Crack repair at the Milan-Malpensa Airport (MXP)
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).
Roadware at the Global Cold Chain Expo, June 13-15, 2017. Chicago
JUNE 13-15, 2017Â | MCCORMICK PLACE | CHICAGO, IL
Roadware will exhibit in the Global Cold Chain Expo 2017. Look for us in Booth 5128.
The GCCE covers all aspects of cold storage warehousing and logistics.  Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ is the go-to product for repairing cracks, joints and spalls in all kinds of refrigerated and freezer warehouse applications.
The cold environment and heavy weight traffic in a freezer warehouse represents the ultimate challenge for a concrete repair material. Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ has been used for over 20 years in tough cold storage environments.
The Roadware booth will feature Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ and Safety Yellow Concrete Mender™ for creating permanent yellow safety lines in freezer floors.
For reduced or free admission to the GCCE, contact Kelton Glewwe –Â kglewwe@concretemender.com, by June 1st, 2017. For qualified attendees only. Limited time offer.
Roadware YouTube Channel Hits 2 Million Views
The Roadware YouTube Channel hits TWO MILLION VIEWS. Roadware maintains a YouTube video channel that shows Roadware products in action. This month our channel surpassed two million views. The YouTube channel currently has over 50 in-house produced videos showing simple concrete crack repair to advanced decorative and exposed aggregate concrete repairs. Check it out here. Two million views accounts for about 3.8 million watched minutes. That’s about 63,000 hours of watch time.
Here is a gallery of Roadware videos from the Roadware YouTube Channel.
Subscribe to our channel1
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Concrete Spall repair with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™ HD 720p
Concrete Spall Repair with Jon an Hardline Concrete and Masonry using Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender™. Learn more at https://roadware.us
Polished Concrete Repairs for Heavy Equipment dealer.
Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender is used to grout spalls and cracks as part of an extreme polishing system. Bulk mixed Concrete Mender and sand is squeegeed into place to create a smooth durable polished concrete surface.
To find out more visit https://concretemender.com
AST Geroller Pump for Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender
A specially developed pump from AST allows you to pump Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender with hand kit precision.
Roadware at World of Concrete 2023
See the Roadware booth at the World of Concrete 2023 in Las Vegas.
Bulk Concrete Mender for small cracks and spalls
Squeeze bottles are a good alternative application system for Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender when twin 600ml cartridges are not available.
See more at http://concretemender.com
Roadware Concrete Mender VO™ Easy Injection
Enduser video of Roadware Easy Injection being used with Concrete Mender VO™ repair material in a facility that would not allow excess dust or odor in the area. Application temperature was about 35 degrees F. Concrete Mender VO™ is virtually odorless and will make a tough repair without cutting or heavy grinding.
World of Concrete 2022 in just two weeks.
The show is going on live. We hope to see you at the Roadware booth C5923. We will try to post live videos from the show if you can't make it to Las Vegas.
Less Invasive Crack Repair for Concrete Floors and Structures
Less Invasive Crack Repair for Concrete Floors and Structures ICRI 2020 Virtual Fall Convention. Presentation by Kelton Glewwe and Roadware Incorporated. Featuring Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender and the Easy Injection System. Easy full-depth crack injection without pumps, ports, or cutting. See more at https://concretemender.com
How to Buy:
https://concretemender.com/contact-roadware/find-your-distributor/
Can I inject Flexible Cement II?
Let's see how the Roadware Easy Injection System will work with Roadware Flexible Cement II polyurethane.
Roadware Flexible Cement II™, the advanced concrete repair material that is easy to apply and stays in place permanently under thermal or shock movement.
This moisture tolerant two-part urethane is great for repairing cracks and control joints subject to deflection, movement, and thermal expansion or contraction. Flexible Cement is perfect for protecting saw-cut control joints in new concrete construction or repairing failed polyurea or epoxy joint fillers. Cartridge applied Flexible Cement II™ has a slower gel time than polyurea so spot repairs can be made throughout a facility with one cartridge.
Product Webpage:
https://concretemender.com/products/flexible-cement-ii/
Data Sheet:
https://concretemender.com/products/flexible-cement-ii/flexible-cement-ii-data-sheet/
All about Roadware Flexible Cement II:
https://concretemender.com/all-about-roadware-flexible-cement-ii/
How to Buy:
https://concretemender.com/contact-roadware/find-your-distributor/
Roadware Presenting at the Virtual 2020 ICRI Fall Convention
Join me, Kelton at Roadware at @ICRIorg’s Virtual Fall Convention #ICRIFall20, I’ve been selected to present in a product demonstration, Less Invasive Crack Repair for Concrete Floors and Structures on October 13, 2020. https://www.icri.org/page/convention-agenda-fall-2020
Needle Tip Crack Repair from AT Specialty Cements in Puerto Rico.
Needle Tip Crack Repair with Roadware 10 Minute Concrete Mender. Sent in from AT Specialty Cements in Puerto Rico.
Breaking the Rules for Concrete Repair
The Roadware Easy Injection breaks the rule for crack repair in floors and structures. You can repair cracks as small as 20mil without pumps, ports, or cutting with the Roadware Easy Injection System. Find out more at: https://concretemender.com/new-full-depth-hairline-crack-injection-brakes-the-rules/
Roadware Concrete Repair Live Stream
Welcome to Roadware, Join our Road Crew.
Are you ready to take your concrete repairs to the next level? Subscribe to Roadware and join the Road Crew. See more at https://concretemender.com/
Roadware Inc is a custom formulator, blender and manufacturer of polymer concrete repair products for civil, commercial, and industrial use.
Roadware Product Estimator
Use the Roadware Estimator to calculate how much Concrete Mender and manufactured sand needed to repair a concrete crack, spall or joint.
https://concretemender.com/welcome-to-roadware-incorporated/roadware-estimator/
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Floor repair stands up to forklift damage.
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.
Concrete Mender™ was used to re-attach the broken concrete piece and repair the crack.
After about 10 minutes, the repair was buffed smooth and open for traffic.
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.
