Q My husband removed our carpet in the living room in preparation for installing laminate flooring. What he discovered was that there are cracks in the slab flooring. This is the first time we've seen this in our home. We don't know what to do to fix it. Advice?
A There is one thing guaranteed about concrete: It will crack. When concrete is first poured, it may contain up to 50 percent water. As the concrete starts to set up, the water contained in the slab will evaporate or be absorbed into the home's structure. If as little as 10 percent of the total slab evaporates into thin air, the surface area will shrink, and cracking is inevitable. If the crack in your home went unnoticed for years, then I would guess it's not a structural problem. A lot of times a corner of a slab will settle, and the crack can be seen or felt even through some of the thickest carpeting.
People are also reading…
Before the laminate is installed, the crack can be filled with self-leveling crack filler available at home and hardware stores in the flooring departments.