I live in the southeast and have a concrete patio that extends into a concrete floored screened in porch. The concrete has cracked in several places. The house is 10 years old and the concrete has several large cracks in both the screened area and the patio.

I would like to cover the concrete with a material such as tiles or slate. Can I cover a cracked concrete patio with tiles and/or slate? What is the best material?

Thanks

Don't know if you have the depth of the floor to do this but brick paver's dry laid in sand would cover all and no cracks later.

Signed 21 Boat

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A cracked concrete patio is not a good candidate for tiling with cermic, porcelein or slate. 21boats suggestion would be perfect if you have the depth for brick.

Excellent solution from 21boat. You don't say how wide the cracks are but you may need to seal them. If water into cracks can reach the foundation they especially need a permanent seal or even a drain. Large cracks in concrete can indicate a soil problem under the concrete. Or the cracks may have been hairline expansion/contraction cracks to start with, but water seeping into the soil lessened the support and cracks widened at the patio and inside the screened in porch. If there is a water problem, now is the time to address it.

Thanks for your responses! Please forgive the ignorance, but when you say you are not sure I have the depth for brick pavers, do you mean basically for screen door clearances? The patio is about 3.5 inches thick with one expansion joint and one crack that extends from one end of the patio to the other end. The width of the crack is less than 1/8 of an inch. The porch covered part of the slab has 2 cracks that extend from one end to the other, but are less than 1/8 of an inch as well. Do pavers come in different profiles? When you set pavers on concrete, do you place them directly on clean concrete and backfill with sand or create a layer of sand first and backfill cracks of pavers also? Thanks!

Yes the do come in different thickness. Normally the thinner ones are set in mortar. The thicker paver's are set in sand with a " quarry dust " crushed base under that. The depth we were referring to. Is there room for a door to open or steps may play a factor here.

Treat the concrete like the stone base. If full paver's work I would use two substrates here. A 1/2 of rice mix stone, and then the sand base. If the room is tight I would mix in the stone "rice" in with the sand to set paver's. What I'm after here is getting the water under the brick to drain better since this is over concrete and not stone bas for it to drain. This may help from moss starting on the brick if its in a semi shaded area. Either or the better water leaves from under the brick the better.

One other possibility here is set the thinner paver's in mortar but No visible mortar side joints. The brick can move a bit but it looks dry laid to the eye. Just use sand to fill in the tight laid brick. Never tried this before, but my theory is many patios that are all mortared in brick look bad because the mortar joints are cracked or falling out. My suggestion is lay it like a dry laid brick with the sand for joints but they are set in mortar. If they shift a bit you won't be able to tell unless the actual brick cracks.

Just a thought.


Signed 21 Boat

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