Tell us when your Arvada house was built and we'll guess what the garage floor is doing
That's not a party trick. It's what three decades of lifting garage slabs in our own hometown teaches you. AAA's shop is on Russell Court, and since 1988 we've pumped slurry under garage floors from every era of Arvada construction. Each era fails its own way.
- Olde Town and the early-1900s blocks: detached garages on shallow slabs, often re-poured once already, settling wherever a century of roof water has worked the ground beside them.
- The 1950s-70s ranch waves: attached garages on builder fill that went in fast during the boom years. Loose fill keeps consolidating for decades, so these slabs crack down the middle and drop along one side.
- The 1990s-2000s builds out west: newer floors poured over the deep backfill that surrounds a modern foundation. When that backfill settles, the slab drops near the walls, sometimes before the house turns fifteen.
Knowing which failure you own matters, because settled fill stays settled once we lift the floor, while an active water source will dig the void right back out unless it gets rerouted. Trevor sorts that out at the estimate, before anybody drills anything.
The Arvada twist: water finds the apron
Every garage slab has a weak point where the floor meets the driveway apron, and Arvada weather goes after it hard. Spring upslope snow melts fast and pushes water against the apron joint. Freeze-thaw pries the joint open a little wider each winter. And where an older downspout discharges near a garage corner, the clay under the slab edge washes out year over year, the signature Arvada problem. We find more voids near apron edges than under any other part of the structure. A hollow sound when you tap the floor just inside the door is the early warning, and it's worth acting on before the cracking starts.
Raising the floor without emptying your life onto the driveway
Mudjacking works through the slab instead of around it. We drill 1-1/2" holes at the low sections, pump our cement, water, and sandy loam soil mix underneath until the floor reads flat, then patch every hole flush. There's no jackhammer, no rubble, no week of cure time with your cars exiled to the street. Trevor will tell you at the estimate how long to keep foot and car traffic off the slab.
We do need to reach the concrete, so the garage has to be cleared, or at least half-cleared. Plenty of Arvada customers shift everything to one wall and we lift the floor in two passes; nothing has to leave the property. We bring the floor back flat, and if the slab carries a long crack we can usually land both sides at the same height so it becomes a line you sweep across instead of a step you trip on. We've raised slabs up to 12 inches. Deeper than that and the honest conversation is about replacement, and we'll have it with you.
What it costs here
Arvada garage lifts are priced by slab area and how far the floor has to travel, quoted free and in person. A single low corner by the apron is the small end of the job. A full two-car floor down a few inches is the big end. Either way you're far under the cost of breaking out a slab inside a finished structure and pouring new.
One planning note: if an epoxy or polyaspartic coating is in your plans, lift first. Coatings follow the slab, so coating a tilted floor makes the tilt permanent. Once cured, the patched holes take coating like the rest of the surface.
The estimate is free and Trevor does it himself
He'll set a level across the crack, tap the slab for hollow spots, and figure out which Arvada failure mode your garage has: old fill still compressing, or moving water that needs rerouting before any lift will last. You get a written number on the spot. Read up on garage floor leveling, then call (303) 526-2222 or tell us what the floor is doing. From Russell Court, an Arvada garage is a short drive.