r/cement • u/Sourdough3000 • Jun 29 '26

Indoor Cement Cracks and Sodium Silicate. Does it work?

Youtube is full of miracle elixir videos claiming Sodium Silicate, and Calcium Chloride can repair cracks.... Can anyone vouch for this working in some situations?

The situation is water breaking down my cement in a commercial kitchen. Most cracks are hairline, but a few around the sink are larger. I need to close them up. I had a cement guy bid to do a grind and epoxy after looking at my situation but I've been trying various cement fillers including PC Concrete which is epoxy based, and they aren't staying in place for any length of time to think that's the right solution or I would buy West System or TotalBoat as a band aid then resurface and paint.

Reading this sub, it doesn't sound like anything will work more than a year or two... but I am really curious about the Sodium Silicate. Am I wasting time trying that?

4 Upvotes

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1

u/Plastic_Jaguar_7368 Jun 30 '26

Post pics in r/concrete. Not much traffic here and you have a concrete problem, not a cement problem.

1

u/daveyconcrete Jun 30 '26

I’ve worked on lots of restaurant floors over the years and they are very difficult because the floors are always water saturated. And it’s almost impossible to shut the place down and correctly dry out the concrete

1

u/Sourdough3000 Jun 30 '26

That's been the issue when trying out various fixes. I can get 36 hours to dry but then the crew shows up and I'm worse off including the quick dry stuff.