Grouting Concrete Relief Cuts- What's the Plan?

Jun 10, 2021
2 min read

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One of the most commonly asked questions right now is about our concrete floors. A lot of you have been wondering what we are doing with them. All along we planned to leave the concrete as our flooring on the main level. We knew that it would save money, and since it's heated it would be more comfortable than a normal slab.

Everyone will tell you (the truth) that your concrete is going to crack. It's unavoidable. Stress cuts allow it to crack in the lines and you get fewer random jagged cracks in your slab. Paul came up with the idea to add a LOT of stress cuts, giving the slab the look of 4x4 square tiles. We poured on Halloween 2019 so it's been through 2 winters, hot as heck summer, and so far there aren't any cracks outside of the cuts.

We are using epoxy to seal the concrete, and the manufacturer recommended we grout all of the stress cuts before sealing to ensure that the epoxy would hold up over time. That's why our floor looks the way that it does now!

The grout is a charcoal sanded grout that you would use with tile. The next step is to diamond grind the floors which we are hiring out. That was another recommendation from the epoxy manufacturer so that the epoxy can "stick" to the floor.

Paul said this is NOT a project he wants to do on the regular! If we do this again, he will request that the stress cuts be made a little wider to make it easier to get the grout all the way in the cut. Most of the cuts are 1" deep, so that was tricky getting the grout pushed down far enough.