Concrete Repair & Replacement in Sioux City, IA

Concrete repair and replacement comes down to one judgment call: is the slab still sound, or has it failed? With a median Sioux City home built in 1957, plenty of driveways, walks and patios have spent decades in freeze-thaw, salt and wet loess. Some just need a crack sealed or a dropped panel raised. Some are beyond saving. We look at the concrete, track down the cause and tell you which fix fits.

Reading the damage

• Fine cracks that are not moving come from normal drying shrinkage. Sealing them keeps water out.
• Wide or spreading cracks, more than about 1/4 inch, usually point to movement below. HomeGuide's leveling guide names cracks past 1/4 inch as a reason to replace rather than repair.
• Sunken or tilted panels that are still one piece are often candidates for lifting.
• Scaling and spalling, where the top flakes or pops loose, come from freeze-thaw and salt. Small areas can be patched or resurfaced; when it covers most of the slab, replacement is usually the answer.
• Panels broken into many pieces have failed and have to come out.

Finding the cause

Repairs fail when the cause stays. In loess country the usual cause is water. Loess loses its strength when it gets wet, so a downspout aimed at a walk, a patio that drains toward the house or a gap where runoff slips under a driveway will keep undermining the slab. We look at downspouts, grading and joints, and we include those fixes in the plan.

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Leveling sunken concrete

Lifting raises a settled slab by pumping material underneath it. Mudjacking pumps a cement-based slurry; polyjacking injects expanding foam through smaller holes. In HomeGuide's leveling guide, mudjacking runs $4 to $9 a square foot and polyjacking $8 to $25. The same guide says a leveled slab typically holds 5 to 10 years or longer, provided the drainage problem behind the settling has been fixed. Lifting is for slabs that are intact and simply out of level. On a panel marked by a city sidewalk notice, we will tell you whether lifting can bring it within the city's grade and separation limits or whether it has to be replaced.

Replacement

When a slab is broken, scaled across most of its surface or keeps dropping, we saw-cut along the joints, take out only the failed sections where we can, rebuild the base and place new air-entrained concrete doweled into what stays. Partial replacement saves money when the rest of the slab is in good shape. On older properties, redoing a whole drive or walk at once often looks and performs better than patching it panel by panel.

Surface repair and sealing

Shallow scaling on concrete that is otherwise solid can be patched or given a resurfacing layer, which HomeGuide prices at $3 to $7 a square foot. A penetrating sealer afterward slows the next round of freeze-thaw damage. If a surface repair is not going to last on your slab, we will say so.