There are many different fasteners and fastening systems for attaching things to concrete. What you are looking for is a balance between speed, strength and cost.Nails driven with a hammer or with a power actuated gun work well in attaching something to a floor to keep it from sliding sideway...
Dave Ashberry of King Packaged Materials joins Jon in running down the various methods and products used making surface repairs to concrete.Cracked corners or edges on concrete steps are a major hazard and should be fixed. Top & Bond is one of the basic surface patching materials availab...
Oil stains are almost impossible to get out of concrete. Substances that tend to sit on the top surface of the concrete are much easier to get off. We did some testing with various stain and graffiti removal products. Nothing worked perfectly.Since this show I have been looking for somethin...
Bill from Edmonton, Alberta has coloured and varnished concrete outdoors, which has turned out to be just too slippery.To keep the same look but eliminate the safety hazard I would suggest another coat of the same finish but while it is wet, sprinkle in painter's sand. You can find little contai...
There are two basic mechanisms which can cause a basement to move because of freezing temperatures -- ice-block formation and ad-freezing.Frost heaving: a form of ice-block formation occurs when moist soil lies under the foundation footings and the frost line or freezing-point penetration reac...
Wood in contact with slightly humid concrete can easily develop dry rot. (search keyword "rot" for the title "WHAT IS DRY ROT?") This often happens to studs laid on the basement floor or standing up against basement walls. A perfectly dry basement will present no problem -- but how many ba...
A viewer asks if she can put peel-and-stick tiles on a painted concrete floor or whether she has to build a sub-floor.If the paint is intact, that means that there is no moisture problem pushing up from below and that the paint will work as a primer for the glue. As long as the surface is smoo...
There are now a number of products on the market specifically designed for cleaning concrete, and when I tested them on the TV show, most of them appeared to work on asphalt stains. One of the keys is to brush in the cleaner, and then to use a high-pressure water power washer system to flush eve...
Insulated Concrete Forms, or ICF construction, is a growing and viable way to build houses. Initially sold just to make insulated foundations, whole homes are now being built out of concrete because of these techniques. ICF actually stands for the whole field of pouring concrete into forms ...
There are many different ways to anchor things into concrete, each with its own distinct difficulty, cost and holding power.Concrete nails simply keep things from sliding, but have very little resistance to "pull-out".Tap Con or Grip Con screws actually cut threads into the sides of the pre-drill...
