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Q What can I do about cracks in my concrete basement floor? They’re about 2 mm wide and haven’t gotten worse during the decades we’ve been in the house.

A Cracks like yours are stable and common in concrete basement floors, but there are reasons to fill them anyway. Besides making you feel more at ease, sealing can keep out radon gas and perhaps water leaks. The trick is sealing cracks so the repair lasts.

The approach I like best uses both an injection of liquid into the full depth of the crack, and a surface application of carbon fiber fabric on top. The best systems have more than enough injection pressure to fill a 2-mm crack with epoxy or polyurethane foam all the way through the thickness of the floor or walls. The thing about concrete is that it can shift, and even a little movement will re-open sealed cracks. This is where the carbon fiber fabric comes in. Secured to the face of the concrete with liquid epoxy after filling, the result is stronger than the surrounding concrete and completely immune to re-cracking. I’ve used both the DRICORE and Rhino injection and carbon fiber systems and they’re amazing. Even if no injection were used, the carbon fiber still keeps things solid and sealed.

Q What can I do to make my newly-finished 15 year-old deck look better than terrible? I had my son sand and refinish it and the result is blotchy and ugly.

A From your photos I see that you’ve got a coloured, translucent finish applied to a deck with patches of grey weathered area underneath. The only way your deck would look good right now is if the wood had been sanded all the way back to a fresh surface before finishing. Sanding half way is your problem. If you want the wood grain to show through, pressure washing followed by an application of a deck brightener gets rid of as much gray as possible. Sand right back to bare wood using nothing finer than an 80-grit abrasive, then get out the paint brush. A lot of work, yes, but there is an easier alternative.

Paint-like deck finishes are made for grey decks like yours, and though they’re not exactly like paint, they are opaque. This kind of product could be applied directly over what you have now with minimal prep. It would look nice and neat, but no wood grain would show through. Sand what you’ve got now lightly with an 80-grit abrasive in a random orbit sander to boost adhesion, blow the surface clean with a leaf blower, then apply an opaque deck stain.

Q How can I have a water well drilled in my urban backyard? I’d like to have the security of my own water supply in case municipal water stops flowing someday.

A Although it’s not likely municipal water will stop flowing for any length of time, if it does your well would be the oasis in the middle of an urban desert. Any well drilling contractor can drill a well for you, provided they can get their equipment into your backyard. You’d also need to dig a trench from the well casing to your house, with a water pipe and power cables laid down in the trench. Inside your basement you’ll also need a pressure tank to store the water, and a pipe and valve connection so your well water can be directed into your household plumbing. If things get bad enough that municipal water stops flowing, electricity will be out, too. If security is your aim, consider installing a hand pump on your well. Watch me install one in my own well at baileylineroad.com/hand-pump-install.

Steve Maxwell finds that hand-pumped, ice-cold well water tastes best. Visit Steve online at BaileyLineRoad.com and sign up for his Saturday morning email newsletter.

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