The crack down the middle of an Aurora garage floor
The call usually starts the same way: there's a crack running the length of the garage slab, one side has dropped below the other, and the gap grows a little every year. In Aurora's west and central neighborhoods, where most of the housing went up between the 1970s and the 1990s, we can usually tell the homeowner what happened before we see it. The builder backfilled the foundation, poured the garage slab over fill that never got compacted right, and that fill has spent decades slowly packing down. The slab followed it.
Mudjacking fixes it from below. We drill 1-1/2" holes through the settled section, pump slurry under the slab, and bring the low side up until it's flat with its neighbor. The crack that used to catch the snow shovel closes to a seam. Nothing gets jackhammered, nothing gets hauled out through your driveway, and Trevor will tell you when the car can come back in. We check the floor after every pump run, so the one you get back is one you can roll a jack across without chasing it downhill.
East Aurora's brand-new garages have an old problem
The construction sprawling east of the older neighborhoods is putting garages on freshly moved dirt, and fresh fill settles. We now get calls from homeowners whose houses are five or eight years old and whose garage slabs already sit an inch low at one corner. That's not a defect in the concrete; it's backfill consolidating on schedule. The good news is those slabs lift clean, because the settlement is even and the concrete hasn't cracked yet. Catch it early and the job lands at the bottom of the price range.
Water finds the apron
Aurora's summer storms are famous for hail, but it's the water that gets under garage floors. A hail-alley downpour drops rain faster than the baked ground can drink it, and the overflow sheets down the driveway to the garage apron, where any gap under the door lets it work beneath the slab. Each storm carries a little more soil out with it. In drought summers the clay shrinks and opens the path for the next storm to do worse. If your garage floor stayed flat for twenty years and suddenly has a low corner, water did it, and we'll want to know where that water came from before we lift, because fixing the slab without rerouting the water is a repeat appointment.
What the job costs and what it saves
Garage floor lifts are priced by the slab's area and how far it has to travel, quoted free and in person. For perspective, replacing a garage slab means breaking out concrete inside a finished structure, wheeling the rubble past your cars, repouring, and losing the garage for a week while it cures. The truck that shows up carries 10 yards of material, about double the usual load.
A few honest boundaries we work within:
- We've raised slabs up to 12 inches. Beyond that, the connection at the foundation wall becomes the real problem and replacement is the smarter buy.
- The slab has to be reachable. Shift the garage contents to one side and we'll lift in two passes if we need to.
- Planning an epoxy coat? Lift first. Coatings lock in whatever slope the floor has the day they cure.
Start with a tap and a level
Before you call anyone, set a level across the crack and see how far the low side sits. Then tap the slab with something solid every few feet and listen. A hollow ring says the ground under that spot is gone, and a garage slab bridging empty space will keep dropping until the space is filled. Those two checks take five minutes, and they're the same ones Trevor runs during the free estimate, along with sorting out whether your settlement came from tired old fill or active water.
The estimate is in person, the quote is written, and the visit costs nothing. Read more on our garage floor leveling page, or start your free estimate and call (303) 526-2222 to get on the schedule.