How to Prevent Cracks in Your Stamped Concrete Patio

What are the best ways to minimize or prevent cracks to your home’s stamped concrete patio?

This is so important because you don’t want to go through all the trouble of laying beautiful stamped concrete, only to watch it deteriorate and detract from your outdoor environment. We’ll help you ensure that never happens with some suggestions in this article.

Ways to Prevent Cracks in Your Stamped Concrete Patio

1. Pour Concrete with Enough Cure Time
   • You can eliminate most cracks with better pouring and paving, which involves letting it cure properly. A full cure lasts about 28 days. This will give you much less chance for cracking by letting the water evaporate at a slower rate.
2. Use Control Joints
   • Stamped concrete patios last much longer if you use control joints to create certain weak spots to promote stability. You would install these at about a quarter of the concrete depth. Done properly, they can minimize cracks or at least make them more manageable.
3. Avoid Adding Too Much Water to New Patio Concrete
   • If there’s excessive water in the concrete mix, it results in a weaker finish. You also have to worry about using less than enough water for fear of making the concrete so dry that it crumbles apart. This is one of many reasons concrete paving is a skilled trade, and not the best “DIY” renovation task.

One Other Essential Stamped Concrete Patio Tip

Always make sure you have a compact base for your stamped concrete patio. The base has to be compact or your concrete will be at the mercy of the shifting clay soil, which expands and contracts, leaving you with enormous cracks. If you don’t do this right, you’ll create a void beneath the concrete (contributing to future cracks), or struggle to keep the patio level and even.

Sometimes You Can Seal Minor Cracks

In certain cases, when cracks occur, homeowners can try to seal them with advanced polymer sealants, as long as things haven’t gotten too out of control. Granted, this can turn into a band-aid solution if cracks spread all over the place.

If you arrive at a point where you can no longer contain patio cracks, then call Johnson Concrete to explore more effective solutions. This also applies to various other concrete applications like driveways and garage floors.

Avoiding Stamped Concrete Patio Cracks Depends on Better Paving

These are the best reasons to call a professional for a free inspection and reliable stamped concrete patio installation.

• We Know What We’re Doing – This work demands patience and expertise. There are numerous measurements and pouring variables to consider for any concrete project. So, it’s smart for homeowners to outsource this difficult work to a skilled tradesman for optimal results.
• Our Team Has Insurance & Licensing – You should never do business with contractors who can’t provide proof of insurance, bonding, and licensing. We have all of that because we’ve been in business for over three decades paving concrete in our community.
• Check out our Previous Work – We also encourage customers to consider our services based on our outstanding past performance. You can browse through our portfolio of concrete projects to find out what we’ve done for other Kansas City homes and businesses.

Johnson Concrete: The Kansas City Experts on Every Concrete Detail

Johnson Concrete can help you prevent all those irksome patio, driveway, or sidewalk cracks, and let you get back to enjoying a beautiful outdoor atmosphere. Our outstanding reputation in Kansas City comes from doing everything carefully, and without all the delays, sales pressure, or hassles. By providing reliable service, we earn lots of 5-star reviews from homeowner and business clients on our Google business profile.

Contact us anytime to learn all the best ways to prevent cracks in your stamped concrete patio once and for all.