Quite Adventurous

One of the more adventurous repairs I've done to our earth-quaked house.

Garage.

The floor slab had cracked right across and lifted a few cm. For a couple of years I've been catching wheels, toes and timber on the bloody thing.
I found out exactly how to effect the repair. It included all sorts of manly stuff like petrol-powered concrete cutters and hammer drills and a special concrete epoxy and even a concrete truck.

I now have a great deal more respect for the people I see using concrete cutters on our roads and stuff. These things are tough to use. They're heavy, vicious and powerful, and yet take a surprising degree of finesse to use effectively. You have to take the roaring, spitting thing and balance its blade exactly on the face of the cut so it's just about to (but not quite) climb out and go tearing across to say a big hello to the wall. It'd probably have gone straight through it and also said hello to the the neigbour's fence.

Once the smoke had cleared and cooling water drained away I was able to see that I'd kept things pretty straight. Next thing, after a few quiet moments to find myself emotionally, was to break out the concrete with a sledge hammer. I was too lazy to drive back to the hire place and get a jack hammer. Next time I'm going to get one; that concrete slab still had a bit of fight in it.

But here's the result. Next step was epoxy in steel starter rods, lay more reinforcing, then pour and float the concrete. That part was actually quite fun...