Concrete Staining & Sealing in Fraser

Concrete is a sponge with a hard face. Water goes into the pores, freezes there in a Michigan winter, expands, and pushes the surface apart from the inside. That is the mechanism, and it explains why a fifty-year-old Fraser drive flakes at the apron and along the control joints first. Salt makes it worse rather than better. Brine tracked home on tires from Utica Rd, 14 Mile Rd and Groesbeck Hwy lowers the freezing point of the water already sitting in the slab, so the concrete cycles through freeze and thaw far more often than the air temperature suggests.

The ground adds to it. Flat lake-plain clay holds water instead of passing it along, so a slab here sits on wet subgrade for weeks each spring and takes moisture from below as well as above. The low blocks near the Harrington Drain hold it longest. Where old flatwork has settled, the puddle in the middle soaks in for hours after a rain, and the apron at the street, already lifted by frost, opens a joint that water runs straight into. A sealer will not level a settled slab or close a heaved joint. It stops the sound concrete around them from taking on the water that would make the next one.

For this housing we use a penetrating sealer, which soaks into the pores and leaves concrete looking like concrete instead of laying a film on top. That matters on original 1960s flatwork, because a film-forming product over a slab still drawing moisture from clay subgrade will cloud and peel inside a season. Penetrating sealer on a Fraser drive starts at $299 and goes back on every three to five years. Where an owner wants color, a stain goes down after the cleaning and before the sealer, usually on a porch slab or a back patio. Either way the surface has to be clean and dry first, so cleaning and sealing are quoted together and done a day or two apart.

Sealer Mistakes That Show Up the Next Spring

Most sealer failures start with a slab that was not ready. Sealing over damp concrete, or over a film of clay and salt, traps moisture and dirt underneath, and by April the surface is cloudy, white at the edges and peeling in sheets that have to be stripped first. The second is a heavy film-forming coat on old concrete, which looks glossy for one summer and flakes after one winter. The third is sealing a slab that is already coming apart, since a sealer over spalling concrete locks the damage in rather than stopping it.

Timing It Right

Late spring through early fall is the window, because the slab needs a run of dry, mild days on both sides of the work. Most Fraser owners clean in spring and seal in late summer, which uses the driest part of the year and puts fresh protection down right before the salt season starts. Air and slab temperature both need to stay above the low fifties overnight, so October is usually the last call we can take.