We recently bought a house in Los Angeles with a garage that had been built within the last year. The inspection noted the flooring as concrete slab and didn’t note any issues. However, within a month the surface cracked near a wall and the cracks spread quickly, with large shards of this very brittle half inch layer of material separating from the floor anytime something rolled over it (no cars or anything heavy).

It got to the point where I was using a leafblower to clear wood dust from the garage and the blower caused entire sections of this layer to lift and crumble. I started to just remove as much of it as I could since it was creating more dust and my pry bar was able to just slide underneath most of it. Certain areas seem to have actually set to the slab underneath and would need to be chiseled up. It looks like whatever it is was covering some holes/rough patches in the underlying slab.

All that said, just wondering what this was, why it failed, and what my best course of action would be here to remove it without further damaging the concrete underneath. I plan on eventually laying porcelain tile in the garage, so I’m hoping to avoid any issues once I get there. Any help is appreciated!