Yes. Cracked concrete is routine — we repair cracks with TerraMend 100% solids polyurea filler before the coating goes down. Hairline cracks up to 1/4 inch are handled as part of every install at no extra charge. Larger cracks or structural cracks may need extra evaluation, but the vast majority of garage floors I see have cracks, and it's never been a reason to walk away from a job.
If you've been staring at a crack thinking your floor is too far gone, it's probably not. Here's what we actually do.
Why does concrete crack in the first place?
Concrete cracks because it shrinks as it cures and moves with temperature. That's not a defect — it's inherent to the material. Wisconsin garages take it worse than most because we see 100+ freeze-thaw cycles per year. Water gets into a hairline, freezes, expands by 9%, widens the crack, water gets further in, repeat. Over 20 years, every concrete slab develops some pattern of cracking.
The three types I see most:
- Shrinkage cracks: Thin, irregular, usually cosmetic. Happen in the first year or two of the slab's life. Routine to repair.
- Control joint cracks: Hairlines that formed along saw-cut joints. Actually doing their job — they contained the crack to a straight line.
- Settlement cracks: Wider cracks where one side of the slab has dropped. These need more attention.
None of these are deal-breakers on their own. They're just different situations with different fixes.
What's TerraMend?
TerraMend is a 100% solids polyurea crack repair compound that cures from -20°F to 130°F. That temperature range matters in Wisconsin — we can repair cracks in an unheated garage in January if we have to. Traditional epoxy fillers stop curing below 50°F, which means on most cold-month jobs they're not even an option.
Chemically, TerraMend is the same family as the basecoat we apply over it. That matters because the repair material bonds to the coating at the same rate the coating bonds to the concrete. You don't get a dissimilar-materials interface where the repair can lift away from the coating. It becomes part of the system.
Cure time is fast — about 30 minutes to walk-on, which means we can repair cracks in the morning and be coating by afternoon on the same day. That's part of what makes one-day installs possible.
How do you repair a crack?
The process on a typical hairline or 1/8-inch crack:
- Clean out the crack. We V-groove it with a diamond blade if needed, then vacuum out dust and loose material.
- Fill with TerraMend. The polyurea is thin enough to wick into the crack, not just sit on top.
- Screed flush. We level the repair to the surrounding concrete.
- Grind over it. Once cured, the repair gets ground flat with the rest of the floor during our diamond grind pass.
After the flake broadcast and topcoat go down, the repair is invisible. I wrote more about visibility in will garage floor coating hide cracks.
What about wide cracks or sinking concrete?
Wider cracks — say 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch — still get TerraMend, just more of it. We might use a backer rod in the deep part of the crack and fill over it. The backer rod prevents the filler from sagging into the void and lets us get a flush, solid repair without burning through a bucket of material.
If the slab has settled and one side is lower than the other, that's a different problem. You've got a vertical offset, not just a crack. Options:
- Minor offset (under 1/4 inch): We can feather it during grinding and fill with polyurea. Coating hides the transition.
- Significant offset (over 1/2 inch): I'll recommend mudjacking or polyjacking before we coat. Companies like that specialize in lifting settled slabs. Once the slab is level, we coat it.
- Structural cracks from foundation movement: Get an engineer's opinion before anyone coats anything. No floor coating fixes a structural problem; I don't want to cover evidence of something that matters.
I'd rather send you to a foundation specialist than coat over a serious problem. That's not how I do business.
Will the crack come back through the coating?
Rarely, if the repair is done right. The polyurea filler flexes along with the coating — we're talking 311% elongation in the base material — so small concrete movements don't transfer through as visible cracks in the topcoat. The flake broadcast also visually breaks up the surface, so even if a very fine line did telegraph, you'd have to really look for it.
The failure mode I've seen on other contractors' work is when they use cheap epoxy filler or caulk-gun latex products. Those cure rigid, shrink as they cure, and pop back out within a winter. Polyurea doesn't do that. The cure is flexible and the shrinkage is near zero.
Do cracks add to the cost?
For normal hairline and narrow cracks, no — it's built into the price. Our pricing of $7-9/sqft includes standard crack and pit repair as part of the prep phase. I don't nickel-and-dime on crack repair because the repair isn't the expensive part — the material and labor difference between a clean slab and a normally cracked slab is small.
For heavy crack networks, large cracks, or slabs that need mudjacking, I'll call that out in the quote. I don't do surprise upcharges on install day.
What about pitting and spalling?
Same answer. Pits, spalls, and surface damage get filled with polyurea (sometimes mixed with silica sand for larger voids), ground flat, and coated over. Years of road salt damage that looks hopeless on bare concrete completely disappears under a flake broadcast. I've done floors that looked like the moon and come out looking showroom new.
My garage has a dozen cracks. Am I past the point of coating?
Probably not. I've coated floors with more cracks than I could count. As long as the slab is structurally sound — not sinking, not lifting, not actively moving — cracks are a cosmetic problem that we fix during prep. The coating goes on over a level, clean, repaired surface regardless of what it looked like when we started.
Send me photos and I'll give you a straight answer. Get a free quote or call Dave at (715) 307-8302.