My 15 year driveway is starting to look pretty bad with all the pock-marks caused by water freezing and causing dime sized holes to appear on the surface. Is there a product that I can use to patch these holes? I try to seal the drive each winter, but sometimes I get caught by a hard freeze.
Those spots are either caused by using salt as a de-icer or due to excessive moisture in the concrete mix when first place. What do you use to seal the driveway?
There are assorted epoxy coatings and topping mixes, but they're either not cheap or not very good.
RUse hydralic or patching cement.......
let it dry at least a week the DUMP on literally thompsons water seal broom in place to spread, let dry it may take a couple days even if its hot.
note concrete will now be a shade darkewr but not absorb water.
detoriatriuon will largely stop of you applied enough/
reapply every 2 to 3 years it wouldnt take nearly as much
Common Surface Defects
Concrete which has been damaged by cold weather commonly has surface defects. The most common defect is spalling. Spalling is simply the peeling or loss of the top finished layer of the concrete. It usually happens because the upper surface of the concrete froze before enough crystals grew to give this layer a strength of 500 PSI.
Popouts are another common surface defect. A popout is created when a piece of aggregate (rock) in the upper surface of the concrete explodes as a result of freezing. Some pieces of aggregate have a tendency to absorb water. This water freezes, expands and BOOM! Gravel companies go to great lengths to try to remove this type of rock from the gravel. However, they don't always catch every piece.
Deicing salt damage is another common surface defect related to cold weather. Scaling of your concrete can happen even if everything was done correctly. As concrete is exposed to air, it gets harder. This process is called carbonation. The carbon dioxide in the air reacts with the concrete and creates limestone (calcium carbonate). Some forms of limestone are very hard!
This carbonation process, however, usually takes one year to produce any substantial differences in strength. So, if you use deicing salts or they drip from the under side of your car onto your new slab, you may have a problem.
Popouts can also be caused by dirty aggregates.
This might help.
Patch wrote:
keeping moisture out of the concrete stops the detoriationm after thompsons water beads on surface and doesnt absorb to freeze and expand doing damage
Well, I see a problem with this. Concrete is porous. It will absorb moisture from the sides and bottom where it comes in contact with the soil. Having a top coat will make the slab hold onto more moisture as it can not evaporate as well as it could have.
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