Rust Stains on a Garage Ceiling

Next time you walk your parking garage, look up. A crack in the ceiling with brown or orange staining around it usually means the steel inside the concrete is rusting. White crust along the same crack means water has been moving through the slab.

All winter, cars carry road salt onto the deck above, and the salt water works down through cracks and joints, a little deeper with every freeze and thaw, until it reaches the steel. Rust takes up several times the space of the steel it replaces. So it pushes on the concrete from the inside. The stain shows first. Later the crack widens and pieces of concrete come loose.

The stain is the early stage. The repair is smaller and cheaper now than after the concrete starts to break away.

We fix this: Parking Garage Restoration