Patching concrete in basement floor

by margaret
(bc)

Q. We recently had our basement floor slab cut to install pipes for a new bathroom and laundry area. The builder filled the cut with hand mixed cement. It has dried very rough, with irregular white lines on the join edge. It doesn't look like "finished smooth cement" Should it? Today he topped a few areas with a very sandy rough cement. It just doesn't look right.

A. If you are going to install some type of flooring over the filled in areas then the finish on the cement isn't that important. It just needs to be level with the existing concrete floor.

If you aren't going to cover the concrete floor with any kind of flooring then you need to hire a concrete contractor to fix the rough patched in areas and make them smooth. The builder should pay to have the areas fixed since he did not know how to trowel concrete smooth.