Deciding to build a granny flat is simple, designing and building the extension can be a lot harder. You'll have a lot of questions to answer along the way. Can you use a general contractor or is is better to use one who has built a lot of granny flats before? Is a template design better than a customised one? Should you let the person who'll live in the flat have a say in what it looks like? Luckily, I'm here to help. My name is Maria. We moved my Mum into a purpose-built granny flat last year, so I've had to answer all these questions and more. I thought it'd be useful for other people to see how we managed the process, so here we are — get reading!
4 Reasons to Repair Small Foundation Cracks with Epoxy Instead of Concrete
Most people understand how serious a cracked foundation can be, and yet it can still be tempting to ignore very small cracks. Instead of ignoring the problem, you should call a professional right away to have it fixed before it has a chance to get worse.
For smaller cracks, you'll often end up choosing between concrete repair and epoxy injection. While both options have their own pros and cons, here are just four reasons you should choose epoxy injection.
1. Quick and Cost-Effective
You'll want to have your crack repairs carried out as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality, and epoxy injection provides those advantages without making you pay through the nose. Only a few professionals are required to inject epoxy, and the process of mixing and installing it is much less labour intensive than mixing and filing concrete. When things are done faster and by fewer people, you won't need to spend as much money.
2. Deeper Penetration
You'll clearly want whatever material you use to fill the foundation cracks to penetrate right down and leave no air pockets. Epoxies do this very well for two main reasons. First, epoxies dry relatively slowly, which means they have time to penetrate into even the smallest cracks and crevices. Additionally, epoxies are injected at low pressures, meaning that the professional repairing your foundation will be better able to visually monitor where they need to ensure the crack is completely filled—that's very hard to do when using concrete.
3. Added Flexibility
Concrete clearly isn't as flexible as epoxy—in fact, it isn't very flexible at all. At first, that might sound like an advantage, but keep in mind that more flexible materials are less likely to crack in the future. Even minor foundation cracks don't come out of nowhere. Instead, they indicate some movement in your property. Epoxies naturally expand and contract with that movement, so you're unlikely to see more cracks open up in the future. In contrast, concrete won't flex, so you might simply see another crack appear along the same lines in a few years' time.
4. Outstanding Adhesion
Epoxies offer excellent adhesion as well as strength and flexibility. Whether the epoxy injected into your cracked foundations meets metal, concrete, or structural timber, it's going to stick. If there's any movement in the future, it's going to be far less likely than concrete to peel away from structural surfaces and create air pockets.
For more information, contact a foundation crack repair professional.