Can old concrete steps be fixed, or does the flight have to come out?

Can old concrete steps be fixed, or does the flight have to come out?

Whether the steps wore or moved decides it. A flight that only wore, with a crumbled edge, a scaled tread or a corner split off by a railing post, gets patched or has its post re-set. A flight that moved, with a gap at the house, a tilt, or a top step that dropped below the door, gets a new flight. New flights are part of the work on concrete steps and porches in Henderson.

A poured flight is its own small block of concrete standing against a house that does not move. Wear happens to the surface of that block. Movement happens to all of it, and a patch covers only the surface.

Two kinds of flight come up most in town. The tall front flights on the brick two-stories along Main, Center and Elm climb to a deep porch and hold a lot of concrete for a set of steps. The back-door stoops on the East End ranches off Green Street and Zion Road are two steps and a landing, small enough that the worn-or-moved read takes about a minute from the yard.

What does a gap between the steps and the house mean?

A gap means the flight moved as one piece, usually settling at its outer end so the top tips away from the wall. The question is whether it has stopped. A gap the same width top to bottom that has not changed over a few winters can be cleaned out and sealed with backer rod and sealant. A wedge that is wider at the top this spring than it was last fall belongs to a flight that is still going.

Usually the ground under the flight gave way, for the reasons in why a slab sinks and what lifting fixes.

The gap is also a funnel. Roof water running down the wall goes straight into it, against the foundation and into the fill the flight sits on, so an open gap tends to widen itself. To tell a stopped gap from a moving one, draw a pencil line on the brick or siding at the top of the gap in the fall and look at it again in April. Sealant in a wedge that is still opening tears inside a season.

A whole porch slab dropping away from the wall is its own question, answered under a porch slab that settled away from the house.

Why is the front edge of each step crumbling?

The nose is the thinnest, most exposed concrete on the flight. Boot heels land on it and a shovel scrapes it all winter. De-icer sits on that edge too, and freeze and thaw works on it from the top and the face at once, the same cycle laid out in why concrete cracks here. Crumbling that stays at the noses is wear.

When the step behind the nose is sound, the nose gets a formed patch. The loose concrete is cut back to solid, a form board goes up to the old line of the edge, and a bonding patch mix fills it so the step comes back square instead of rounded off.

Rock salt is the slow version of the same damage. It melts the ice on the tread and sends that water into the surface, where the next night’s freeze opens it a little further. Sand for grip on the steps keeps a new nose from going the way the old one did.

There is a point where patching stops making sense even though nothing moved. When every nose on the flight is gone and the treads behind them have scaled down to the stone, the patches would outnumber the original concrete.

What does a rusted railing post do to concrete steps?

An iron railing post set down into a hole in the step holds water at its base. The steel rusts, rust takes up more room than the steel it came from, and that swelling splits the corner of the step off around the post. A broken corner with an orange stain running out of the crack is this, and it is wear, not movement.

The fix is at the post. The railing gets cut free, the old stub and the rust get chipped out of the hole, and the post goes back in a sleeve or onto a plate bolted to the surface of the tread. Then the corner gets a formed patch like a nose would.

Old railings tend to have posts at both ends of every flight, so the damage repeats. When the posts have split every corner on the flight, there is not enough sound concrete left to hold a railing, and that flight is a new pour.

Are old porch steps sometimes hollow, and does that matter?

Yes. Some older flights were poured as a shell, a few inches of concrete over brick, broken block, rubble or dirt that filled the middle of the form. Tap each tread with a hammer handle. Solid concrete gives back a sharp knock. A hollow flight sounds dull and drummy, like tapping on a box.

Hollow alone is not a reason to replace. A shell still in one piece with a worn nose gets the nose patched like any other flight. A shell that has cracked through is different. Water gets into the core through the crack, washes the fill out a little at a time, and the shell starts sitting on less every year. That one is a new-flight job.

The crew confirms which one you have on the site visit, sounding each step and reading the cracks down the sides of the flight.

Can new concrete be poured over the old steps?

Usually no. A cap of new concrete on each tread raises every step by the thickness of the cap. The top step stops meeting the door the way it did, and the bottom step ends up taller than the rest, which is the step people trip on. Getting every step in a flight to match is the whole job of how a new flight is matched to an old porch, and a cap undoes it.

On a flight that moved, the cap has a second problem. A thin topping bonds to old concrete that keeps shifting under it, cracks along the old cracks, and comes loose in sheets after a winter or two.

What does a new flight replace, and what stays?

A new flight replaces the steps and nothing else. The old flight gets broken out on its own, and the porch slab at the top and the walk at the bottom stay where they are. A flight of three or four steps poured in place runs $1,200 - $2,800 in Henderson County, with more on what steps and a stoop cost in Henderson.

The door threshold sets the height of the top step, and the forms divide the rest of the height from there. If there is a railing, sleeves go into the steps while the concrete is still wet, so the posts drop in afterward and can come back out without breaking a corner.

Where the new concrete meets what stays, there are two joints to decide, one against the house and one at the walk. Each is either pinned with steel or isolated so the two pieces can move separately, and which one depends on what the wall and the old walk are doing. That is the crew’s call on the site visit, and it goes on the written quote so you know which you are getting.