However, if you want there to be little maintenance, you have to take a couple of precautionary steps before sitting back in complacency. Concrete, while incredibly strong and long-lasting, is not guaranteed to remain unharmed over the years. In fact, it can be at a high risk of cracking, crumbling, and various other forms of degradation over the years. The easiest way to prevent this potential damage is to treat the concrete structure, in its entirety, with a high quality concrete sealer.
The best choice in concrete sealer for a project like this would be a silane/siloxane sealer, like the Siloxa-Tek 8510. The Siloxa-Tek 8510 is a sealer featuring a mixture of silane and siloxane particles. The two types of particles are suspended in a solvent-based solution that transports the particles to the surface of the concrete. Once at the surface, the silane particles will penetrate slightly past the surface of the concrete, while the larger siloxane particles will remain on the surface of the concrete in a pool to be spread out. Once the solution has been spread out, the particles will bond to the surface, leading to the creation of a hydrophobic barrier that will repel water.
The repelling of water is one of the most important functions of a concrete sealer, as the incursion of water into concrete can lead to a large amount of future problems. If your parking garage is located in an area with a colder climate, then your structure can be at risk of freeze/thaw cycles. These cycles are one of the most devastating threats to concrete, water can seep into the concrete in the warmer months to freeze during the winter before thawing in the spring. The water expands and retracts, leading to cracks that cannot be easily fixed and can lead to further future crumbling. The other major benefit of using the Siloxa-Tek 8510 product is that it is resistant to staining from oils and grease. If you own a parking garage constructed of concrete, then you should treat it with Siloxa-Tek 8510 to ensure it lasts as long as it can.
