The Satisfaction of Carbon Fiber Fabrics For DIY Concrete Repair

The walls of your basement are designed to perform two functions: the first is to hold up your home, and the second is to hold back the surrounding water-saturated clay soil that exerts roughly 4,000+ pounds per foot of hydrostatic pressure against a 10-foot concrete wall. The vertical strength of your concrete foundation is more than sufficient to support the weight of your home, provided the ground upon which your foundation sits is also able to bear the vertical load. Unfortunately, the tensile strength of concrete (its ability to withstand lateral pressure) is significantly lower than its vertical strength. Problems occur because the basement of your house or business has displaced a large volume of soil that would otherwise be drained instead of dammed by concrete walls. Few walls are constructed with the ability to drain away the water content that surrounds them. With the weight of the backfill soil and the titanic hydrostatic pressure exerted by the water content in that soil, it is common to see cracked and bowed basement walls, and cracked and compromised concrete foundations. Repairs can be expensive.

The innovation of carbon fiber fabric as an effective means of concrete wall repair has made it incredibly easy for any homeowner to avoid the huge expense of basement wall repair by doing the work themselves. As long as the edges of the cracks do not jut out more than 2 to 3 inches into the room, carbon fiber strips will allow you to make a permanent repair, and by virtue of making the repair, the carbon fiber strips will prevent further damage and will provide lasting structural support for the life of the building. The repair involves filling the cracks with epoxy to stop any water intrusion that might be occurring, then cleaning the wall to ensure a tight fit when the carbon fiber strips are fastened and glued to the damaged wall.

You don’t need machinery or a lot of equipment to effect a permanent repair on your cracked and bowed basement walls or foundation. Carbon Fiber Support offers a number of premier products to let you substantially reduce the cost of that repair by doing it yourself. Browse our products page and reach out to us if you have any questions about DIYing your concrete repair.