CPC Floor Coatings Blog

Have you ever walked into your company’s warehouse, manufacturing floor, or retail area to discover a large crack in your concrete floor that you're pretty sure wasn’t there the day before? Perhaps you’ve just had a brand-new concrete floor poured for your new facility, and a week later it’s covered in tiny cracks.

What happened? Is your floor weakened or damaged beyond repair?

Let’s take a look at some of the common reasons that concrete floors crack and what it means for your business:

Cracking is part of concrete’s natural tendency

When it’s first poured, concrete is a liquid. Over the course of a couple of days, it hardens into a solid, shrinking as it does so. This initial shrinking often results in hairline cracking within the first few days of installation. Different mixtures and ratios of the cement may minimize some cracking, but can’t eliminate it completely.

Does your facility have a moisture problem? Maybe you come in the morning to find a wet or damp concrete floor. Or worse, perhaps you just had your floors done in the last few months and have discovered your new floor coating is already peeling or blistering.

If you’ve already checked for leaks and have controlled for weather-related humidity but are still having issues, it could be that the moisture is coming through the concrete slab itself.

There’s nothing more frustrating than taking time out of your production schedule to have a new floor coating installed, only to have it peel or crack just months (or days!) later. What causes new floor coatings to fail?

Here are some of the most common causes for floor coating peeling, bubbling and more:

Oil residues

Does your facility regularly uses oils, greases or corrosive substances? If these have ever been spilled on your floor, they may have soaked into the concrete at some point (after all, concrete is a porous material).

Have you ever come into your facility first thing in the morning to find your concrete floor damp or sweaty? Have you found puddles in low-lying areas, or noticed that your new floor coating is starting to blister or get discolored?

Besides being an unsightly nuisance, a wet concrete floor can cause a host of other problems. It can compromise worker safety by creating slippery surfaces, can damage sensitive equipment, and can cause mold problems, especially if there’s wood or carpeting on top. If the floor is coated with epoxy or another coating, moisture can cause it to bubble, stain, peel, or crack.

If you’ve ruled out the possibility of a leak from the roof or from your equipment, you may be dealing with an issue with the concrete floor itself. So what are common causes for wet concrete floors?