See Why Polylevel Is The Right Choice For Your Concrete Repair Needs
If your driveway, sidewalk or patio has uneven surfaces due to sinking concrete, Fortress Foundation Solutions has the solution you need. PolyLevel® is an alternative solution to traditional mud jacking that lifts concrete slabs to a level position and provides long lasting stabilization. Here are some examples showing the difference PolyLevel® can make for homeowners. Call us today at 1-434-290-4110 to get started with a free estimate in Lynchburg, Bethesda, Frederick and the nearby areas!
Sinking concrete can create a serious tripping hazard. Here, you can see that by leveling the concrete at the foot of the front door to this home, tripping hazards can be eliminated and safety can be improved.
The drainage path on a concrete patio is important. Once concrete sinks, it can result in water going where it shouldn’t, resulting in drainage problems. In this example, concrete lifting solved this home’s drainage problems where this patio abuts the house.
In this example, parking the car in the garage required driving over a major bump. Lifting the driveway apron made parking the garage less of an ordeal.
A sunken patio can be a safety liability and diminishes the aesthetic appeal of your outdoor area. This example shows a patio that was lifted back to its original position so it is no longer dangerous and unsightly.
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Concrete Repair Can Be Simple And Affordable
PolyLevel® is a fast & efficient method to raise sinking concrete. This simple foam injection can stabilize your concrete slab for years to come!
Woodford Bros., Inc. can fix your sinking outdoor concrete problems so you can enjoy your driveway, sidewalk or patio again without worry.
In the past, contractors relied upon mudjacking to level concrete that had settled over time. This entailed pumping concrete slurry under the settled slab to raise it and hoping that the settlement wouldnt continue.
At Woodford Bros., Inc. we use PolyLevel® to lift concrete slabs to a level position with less weight and disruption than the legacy mud jacking or slab jacking process.
See for yourself how PolyLevel® works, and check out our before and after photo gallery of PolyLevel® concrete repair.
We would be happy to provide you a free evaluation and estimate for concrete repair and leveling in Ithaca, Liverpool, Elmira, Rome, Canandaigua, Endicott, Auburn and the surrounding areas.
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Hardscape Installation & More In Greater Morrisville Stowe & Lamoille County Vermont
Installing a patio is very time consuming and laborious, especially if you are doing the work completely alone and you have little experience. Instead, solicit Matt Myette Landscaping and get the most from your patio with our skilled artisans, which only save you time and in the long run, money. Contact us for a consultation today!
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How Does It Work
The polymer foam works by injecting it below the sunken concrete slab. This causes it to rise to its appropriate position. It also helps to stabilize loose soil. Once completed after just a few hours, the concrete can be used again shortly after it cures.
The final results are a smooth and level concrete surface. Only dime-sized holes are used to inject the polymer. So they are barely noticeable.
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Why Diy Fixes Wont Cut It
With a big-box DIY store around just about every corner, its tempting to try a quick fix for your cracked or sunken pavement. You could seal the cracks with cheap polyurethane caulk. You might even try some sort of driveway resurfacing kit to hide the flaws in your concrete, but that wont address the soil underneath your slabs thats causing the problem to begin with. Plus, lets face it, a DIY surface never looks as good as one thats professionally installed. The truth is, if you really want professional results, you need to hire a professional team with the experience, equipment and guarantee to do the job right.
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Use Patio Furniture Weights Or Sand Bags
The cheapest way to weight down your furniture is to pick up a few sandbags from your local home improvement store. Just place them on the furniture pieces, and you should be good to go. But they can break and get sand everywhere, and they generally arent pretty.
Going beyond simple sandbags, you can use outdoor furniture weights like these ABCCanopy Weight Bags to hold down your furniture. The ABCCanopy bags work wonderfully on gazebos, tents, cantilever umbrellas, patio umbrellas, and really on all sorts of patio furniture. Each bag can hold up to 40 lbs of sand, and they can easily attach to furniture legs with hook and loop straps. They are also much more secure than simply using sandbags, and are less likely to break and spill sand everywhere.
You can even place individual bags on chairs as chair weights.
Of course, youll need to pick up some sand from your local home improvement store to fill these.
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How To Raise The Level Of A Concrete Slab Without Slabjacking Or Lifting
There are several reasons why you might want to raise the level of a concrete slab. Sometimes, slabs settle over time, allowing annoying puddles to form whenever it rains. Slabs also can crack, flake or deteriorate, making them more of a liability than an asset.
Slabjacking is a major undertaking that shouldn’t be done by an amateur. A much easier solution is to pour a new slab on top of the old one, raising it to the level you want and making it look like new.
Which Repairs Your Concrete Better Polyurethane Foam Or Mudjacking
Sunday, August 30th, 2020
Your driveway, sidewalk, patio, and front porch provide an important first impression to guests and potential buyers. If your concrete has unsightly and potentially hazardous cracks, your homes value will suffer. The easiest way to return your propertys curb appeal is to level out those uneven surfaces and return your concrete to its original state. Mudjacking is the old-school solution for raising sunken concrete that you might have grown up hearing about from your parents . At TerraFirma, we level your concrete with modern techniques and materials, like polyurethane foam.
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Stain The Concrete To Look Like Tile
If you love the look of tiles but not the hard work or the expense, you could stain the concrete to look like tile! Use 1/2 inch tape to create grout lines on the floor and then stain over it. Peel off the tape and ta-da, instant tile! Just make sure to clean it beforehand and seal it afterwards and youll have a concrete patio that looks nothing like concrete.
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What Are Bed Risers
Bed risers are furniture accessories that are either made of metal, wood or plastic, that support the weight of the bed while elevating its height. The only real need you have for the bed risers is when you have once bought a lower bed, and now due to health or comfort reasons need to have the bed lifted higher than before. While we do recommend buying a higher bed in the first place, in some cases this is not an option and bed risers offer a much cheaper alternative than buying a new bed.
As I mentioned before, youll have to build a retaining wall for your raised patio.
Continue digging until you reach the required depth.
Ensure whether the depth is enough to support your patios retaining wall or not. Youll bury the support and base of your wall here.
Therefore, the depth of the trench should be able to provide your wall enough stability.
Make sure that the corners of your trench are square.
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How To Build A Raised Stone Patio
If youre wondering how to build a raised stone patio, follow the steps above but stick with all stone materials.
Material #1: Surface stone
To build a raised stone patio, your first job is to select the flagstone surface material for the patio.
Something to keep in mind with a flagstone patio is that it has bigger gaps between the stones and requires sand to even out the surface . The gaps will need to be filled either with concrete, or even possibly some low growing groundcover plants.
Materials #2: Retaining wall stone
To build your stone retaining wall for the patio, you can select either a real stacked stone material or you can build a concrete block wall and cover it with a stone veneer.
Above you can see not only our raised patio retaining walls in the distance, but the rest of the retaining walls around the pool area that we were doing with all the same style stone veneer.
If you decide to do a real stacked stone, this can be flat flagstone pieces or stacked round stones to your desired height. Either option can use mortar to hold all the stone together for the patio, or can be dry stacked for an even simpler install.
How Does Polylevel Work
First, the concrete lifting contractor drills one or more small holes in the sunken area of the slab, then injects an expanding polyurethane or “geotechnical” foam beneath the slab. As the foam expands due to a chemical reaction, it fills voids and pushes the slab back towards its original position. The PolyLevel® contractor monitors and gauges the expanding action of the foam, controlling the injection process for just the right degree of slab-raising action.
In less than an hour, with no down time waiting for new concrete or mortar to cure, your concrete walkway, patio, or driveway will be ready to use!
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Ezprotekt 12 Inch Bed Risers Solid Steel Bed Or Furniture Post
Do you ever get pissed that your loved ones house is not complete with sufficient storage space? Well these Ezprotekt bed risers provide an extra 1.2 inches and allow one to have additional storage below their bed or even get their home arranged.
These bed risers can help create some space beneath the bed, sofa, couch, etc. Made for strength and endurance, a set of four of these strong Ezprotekt furniture risers can hold up 20,000 pounds while the strong carbon steel design guarantees these furniture risers to never crack.
Ezprotekt 1.2 Inch Bed Risers can help sustain the best height for all your needs. If your loved one is having trouble sleeping because of a health condition, they can use these bed risers to change the height of the bed. This will effectively save you time and enable you to be more effective by feeling healthier and finally having more sleep.
Pros
- Only comes in 3 colors black, white and brown
Plant A Hedge To Buffer Against Wind
Adding greenery to a garden or patio area is almost never a bad idea, unless you hate shade! You could consider building a hedge, or wind break, along the path the wind primarily flows through your property. Assuming youve determined the wind direction, think about how a hedge would look as a break along the windward direction.
Personally, were fans of boxwood hedges, but there are a wide variety of options to choose from. Take a look at this list from Better Homes and Gardens for further hedge ideas.
A couple of aspects to consider before you plant a hedge are:
Height
Consider the target height of the hedge, and how the hedge will impact views and sun exposure. Depending on how large the plants are when you plant them, the hedge may take years to grow in to a satisfying amount.
Maintenance
Hedges are a lot of work to keep under control. If you dont, they become a forest, and it can be very hard to prune them back once theyve gotten out of control. If youre not much of a gardener, and dont really want to pay landscapers to take care of your hedges, you may want to look into other strategies to help keep your furniture in place.
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Forgetting Its Outdoors Not Indoors
Some enthusiastic decorators get so carried away that they forget they are furnishing an outdoor room. Maybe youve seen someones patio that looks like they pushed the living room sofa, lounger, coffee table, and even fake plants outside. Or, theyve relegated the old sofa from the den to the patio or backyard. Dont even think about it.
Its always good to reach for a seamless transition between your interior and exterior, but using the same furniture is taking it too far.
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Options For Repairing Your Patio
REPLACEMENTThe oldest and most expensive method for repairing a sinking concrete patio is to jackhammer it into pieces and start over. Once the patio is broken up and loaded into a dump truck, the ground is leveled, the forms are installed and a new patio poured. One of the downsides to doing it this way, besides the cost, is the disruption to your landscaping and the very real possibility you will need to also repair your landscaping afterward. Concrete workers want to take up the concrete quickly so its likely theyll use a skid-steer loader to remove your back patio. This means they will be driving that mini-tractor back and forth over your lawn to take the concrete pieces to a dump truck parked in front. If patio replacement still sounds appealing, keep in mind that once the concrete is poured, you cant use the patio for a few days while you wait for it to cure properly. And if hot weather is in the forecast while its curing, expect to be out watering the new concrete to keep it from curing too quickly.
There are your three options for repairing a sinking concrete patio. Feel free to contact us if you would like a free estimate on polyurethane concrete raising. We have the experience and expertise to handle this kind of heavy lifting whenever your concrete patio, sidewalk or driveway needs to be raised.
Ready to get started?
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Fill The Holes With Foam
Pour a small amount of both parts of the foam into your quart bucket to test the speed at which the foam mixes and sets. Use your mixing attachment to blend the solution and time its rising rate.
While this step may seem unnecessary, you will need to move quickly when hand-pouring foam. Gauging the foam’s mixing and setting time will allow you to work methodically and reduce cleanup or wasted materials.
After determining how quickly the foam sets, mix one gallon of solution part A with one gallon of part B in a five-gallon bucket lined with plastic. Mix for roughly 15 seconds with your powered attachment or until the two parts have combined thoroughly.
Place a funnel in the first hole and begin to pour the foam mixture into the opening. Once you’ve filled the first hole, repeat the mixing and pouring process for each of the remaining holes.
When Do You Need Concrete Leveling
The warning signs to level your concrete are not always apparent. Cracked, sinking concrete is the main sign of a poorly compacted subsoil, erosion from water leaks, animals tunneling underground, or other structural issues that require leveling.
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Average Price To Raise A Walkway
Hard to find a home without a walkway that has not settle a bit. A typical project of raising 3-4 sections of walkway leading up to the front door 2-3 inches is around $500 -$750.
Another quick and dirty way of determining a ball park price would be to say each section of driveway or patio cost around $150-$250 per inch needed to lift.
Keep in mind these are just examples every job is different and there are many factors to consider!
The size of the slab and the amount needed to be lifted are the main factors that determine price. Since there are fixed costs to each job no matter how big it is, such as travel and set-up, larger projects will cost less per square foot than smaller ones. A single section of sidewalk may cost $250-$450 to raise. Whereas that same section may only cost $60 if its completed with 10 other sections. Also, the location of the raising project can affect what you pay. You may pay less if you are closer to the contractors shop or other jobs they have. Finally, the difficulty of the job will impact the price. Slabs that are hard to reach or have many cracks will take longer and cost more.
Lastly, most reputable concrete raising companies have job minimum requirements to cover travel time, set-up and clean-up. We have seen most minimums around $450 -$950. So if you have a small job such as a singe walkway section to raise it will typically cost you what the minimum is, unless you can bundle your job with a neighbor.
Rock Drill And Masonry Bit
Your drill will need to be powerful enough to drive at least one hole into your concrete slab. With that in mind, source a cordless rock drill since a corded drill may not reach your sidewalk or driveway unless you have a very long extension cord.
You will also need a 1/2″ or 5/8″ masonry drill bit to drill through your slab. Masonry bits have an arrow-shaped head constructed from sturdy steel and can drill holes into solid materials like brick, concrete, or stone.
Both the 1/2″ and 5/8″ bit size will drill an opening large enough to inject the expanding foam. When you’ve finished the job, you can quickly patch the holes and smooth out the surface of your concrete.
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