Fort Collins Mudjacking

People call us with a tape measure already in hand. Twelve by fourteen, they say, so what's that run? And the honest answer is that nobody prices this work off the top of the concrete. We price it off what's missing underneath. Two patios the same size can be an hour apart or a full day apart depending on how much empty space the ground has opened up beneath them.

That's worth understanding before you compare bids, because a low number on a big void means somebody is planning to stop pumping early. Mudjacking floats a settled panel back up on a heavy sand and cement slurry pushed through drilled ports. The slurry does two jobs at once: it packs the loose subgrade solid, then it lifts. When it's the right call, it costs a fraction of a tear-out and you're back on the concrete by tomorrow. When it isn't, we say so standing right there.

What you're buying when you buy a lift

Three things carry the number: material, time on the pump, and getting the rig to the work. Material is volume, and volume is the void. A walk square that dropped half an inch is a few holes and very little grout. A garage apron floating over a washed-out trench eats grout for an hour and goes in stages, because pushing too hard too fast is how you crack the very panel you came to save.

Time on the pump is the part people underestimate. We shoot elevations first, mark the panel, and then lift in small increments with a level riding the slab, watching the joints for movement we don't want. Reach matters too. Our hose runs from the truck to the work, so a backyard patio behind a gate is far less of a problem than it would be for a tear-out crew, but a long pull across soft turf still costs time and matting.

Set that against replacement. A tear-out means demolition, haul-off, disposal, base correction, forms, ready-mix, finishing, and then a week where you can't drive on it. A lift means a morning and a stack of patched circles. On sound concrete, the math is not close.

Why two panels that look identical quote differently

What our lift quote covers

• Grade shots across the panel and the ones next to it, so the target elevation is decided before drilling
• Sprinkler heads, valve boxes, and shallow lines located and flagged along the hose route
• Cores drilled on a pattern that tightens where the void reads deepest
• Grout pumped in stages, with a level on the slab between shots
• Joints raked out and resealed where the lift opens them back up
• Cores plugged with a color-matched mix, finished flush with the surface
• A walk-around on where your roof and grading water actually goes, because that's what emptied the base

Where a lift stops being the better value

Grout is heavy. That weight is the reason the method works, since it consolidates soft material rather than just floating on it, and it's also the reason we turn some jobs down. Add enough dead load over deep, weak fill and you're loading ground that couldn't hold the slab in the first place. On those lots we recommend polyurethane or a rebuild.

Condition of the concrete is the other line. Fort Collins settlement follows two patterns we see over and over. Around Old Town, utility trenches were backfilled generations ago and are still finding their final elevation, so aprons and walks over those lines drop in long, gentle dips. In newer stretches like Registry Ridge and the pockets off Harmony, the drops are sharper and sit right over the deepest engineered fill, often at the far corner of a patio or where a driveway meets the garage.

Either way, we're only lifting concrete worth lifting. If a panel is already spider-cracked, or the surface has scaled down to aggregate, raising it just gives you failing concrete at the right height. And the season matters here more than it does in Denver: we pump from the spring thaw into fall, and once frost holds in the top foot through the day we stop, because a lift set over frozen soil comes back down when the ground lets go in April.