Concrete repair and resurfacing in Bonaire, GA

Cracks on a new slab: which ones matter

Most Bonaire repair requests come from houses under five years old in The Cottages at Blue Ridge and Harley Farms South, asking whether a crack matters. The repair and resurfacing page covers methods.

Heave or settlement? Reading a step in red clay

A step in a slab is either the high side coming up or the low side going down, and on Bonaire's clay both happen, sometimes on the same driveway. They need opposite fixes.

1. Where is the step? At the garage near a downspout is usually heave, wet clay swelling under the top end; at the street it is usually settled fill.
2. Is there a void? A rod pushed under the edge finds air under a settled slab; a heaved slab is tight to the ground.
3. Does it change with the season? Heave eases in a dry August. Settlement only goes one way.
4. Which fix. Settlement in one or two pieces is a foam lift at $600 to $2,500. Heave is a drainage job first, then grind the lip or replace the panel.

Lifting a heaved slab makes it worse, which is why nobody here quotes from a photo.

Sealing and overlays, and the one condition for an overlay

Route and seal is the repair done most often in Bonaire: the crack is chased to a clean quarter-inch groove, blown out, and filled with a polyurethane that stretches when the clay moves. The line stays; water stays out of the base.

An overlay is a bigger commitment: $4 to $8 per square foot bonded to the old slab, so only as stable as that slab. Before one is quoted there has to be evidence the slab has finished moving: a dated pencil mark across each crack, a width measurement, and a second look after a wet season. A builder slab through two or three winters without new offset takes an overlay well, for roughly a third of the cost of replacement; one that opened another sixteenth does not.

Older driveways toward Houston Lake: when to stop repairing

The older homes on larger lots toward Houston Lake have 1990s driveways, 4 inches thick, usually without steel. The repair math: route and seal, $450 and up; lift two sunken panels, $600 to $2,500; overlay the spalled top end, $4 to $8 per square foot. Add it up on a 1,000 square foot driveway in six pieces and you are within sight of a new Bonaire driveway at $5,000 to $8,500 plus removal. In four or more pieces with heave at one end and settlement at the other, the quote is for tear-out and replacement. Repair still wins when the slab is in two or three pieces, the base is dry, and the problem is the surface.

What is different about repair at a Bonaire address

No permit is needed for crack repair, leveling or an overlay in Bonaire; Houston County Building Inspection, 200 Carl Vinson Parkway, Warner Robins, GA 31088, (478) 542-2018 only enters the picture if the job turns into replacing an apron on a county road. For a house inside its builder warranty, read the concrete clause first: cosmetic cracking is usually excluded, settlement sometimes is not. Robins Air Force Base is the county's largest employer. Many homeowners are on a three-year assignment, so we quote with resale in mind and write warranties that transfer to the next owner. Sealed cracks and a bonded overlay carry a transferable warranty; new cracks from ground movement do not. The Bonaire page covers the rest; the driveway cost guide has replacement numbers. Sandhill Concrete matches your project with a licensed Houston County concrete contractor, who measures on site, writes the quote and does the work.