A quick test before you read anything else. Set a golf ball, marble, or anything round on your garage floor, middle of the slab, and let go. If it rolls with purpose toward one wall or one corner, your slab isn't flat anymore, and in Lakewood we can usually tell you which corner before we've seen the house. It's the one on the fill side of the lot.
Cut on one side, fill on the other
Most Green Mountain and west-Lakewood lots were carved out of a slope. The builder cut into the hill on the uphill side and pushed that soil downhill to make a flat pad. Half the garage slab ends up sitting on undisturbed native ground, and the other half sits on placed fill. Native ground barely moves. Fill consolidates for decades, and on this side of town it also gets worked on by slope runoff sneaking through the clay. So the slab settles on the fill side, tips, and cracks somewhere near the line where cut meets fill. We see that crack so often we could draw it blindfolded.
Melt water finds the garage
Lakewood's foothill-edge storms pile snow deeper than the east metro gets, and when it melts, the water obeys the slope. On a lot of graded lots that path runs right past or under the garage. Water follows the apron joint in, or travels through the clay along the foundation, and each pass takes a little soil with it. Cold nights at 5,520 feet freeze what soaked in, jacking the soil apart so the next melt can carry it easier. The result is a garage slab hanging over ground that's slowly leaving.
Fifty-year-old slabs, sixty-year-old fill
The ranches that fill Applewood and Green Mountain went up between the 1950s and 1970s, back when garage-floor fill got tamped by whatever was handy. Those slabs have had a long time to find the soft spots. The good news: age doesn't disqualify a slab from lifting. If the concrete is in a few large, sound pieces, we can bring it back flat regardless of when it was poured, and we bring it back level.
What it costs, and where the limit is
Garage lifts in Lakewood are priced by the slab's size and how far it has to come up, quoted free and in person. Mudjacking handles up to 12 inches of settlement; beyond that, the slab's connection to the walls becomes the problem and we'll recommend replacement instead of taking your money. For context, tearing out and re-pouring a garage floor costs two to three times our top number and puts your garage out of service for a week or more, plus everything stored inside has to live in the driveway while the new pour cures. With a lift, the disruption is one cleared slab and some pump noise, and Trevor will tell you when the car can come back in.
Job day, start to finish
Here's what a Lakewood garage lift looks like:
- You clear the slab, or clear half and we lift in two passes
- We drill 1-1/2 inch holes through the settled area
- The pump truck pushes sandy loam slurry under the slab, filling voids first, then lifting
- We check the floor as it comes up
- Holes get patched flush before the truck pulls away
The slurry cures into a dense, stable fill, so the fill side of your slab ends up solidly supported. If you're planning an epoxy coat or a workshop build-out, do this first; coatings on a moving slab crack along with it. There's more on diagnosing low spots in our post on fixing low spots on a garage floor.
Free estimate, straight answer
Trevor quotes every Lakewood garage in person, for free, and the quote comes in writing. He'll also tell you if your slab is one of the rare ones that shouldn't be lifted, because we're picky about what we pump under. Call (303) 526-2222 and roll that golf ball before we get there. We like a customer who's already done the diagnostics, and the roll direction usually confirms exactly which side of the lot got the fill.