Stand at the back door of a Green Mountain ranch and look at the patio. Odds are decent it's not sitting flat anymore. On Lakewood's graded lots, the back patio usually sits on the downhill side of the house, on fill that was pushed into place when the lot was cut. Fifty-some years later, that fill has been rinsed, frozen, dried, and rinsed again, and the patio has followed it down.
The downhill edge goes first
Here's the pattern we see over and over on the west side. The patio edge closest to the house stays put, because it's bearing on soil near the foundation. The outside edge, the downhill one, sinks. Slope runoff moving across the yard undercuts it from below while the clay underneath shrinks in dry summers. The slab starts tilting away from the house, which sounds like good drainage until the middle drops too and water starts pooling in a bowl, or the whole thing tips backward and sends melt against your foundation instead.
Either way, the fix is the same: get slurry under the low side and bring the slab back to the plane it was poured at.
What a west-side winter does to a patio
Lakewood catches heavier snow than the east metro, and patios catch it worst of all. Nobody shovels the patio. The snow sits, melts from the bottom on sunny afternoons, and feeds water straight into the joint between patio and house and along the slab edges. At 5,520 feet the nights refreeze it. Water that got under the slab expands, lifts soil grains apart, and when it melts the soil settles looser than before. Do that forty times a winter and the patio has measurably less ground under it by April than it had in November.
Original patios on original fill
Applewood and Green Mountain filled in through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and a lot of those homes still have the builder's patio out back. That's not a knock on the concrete. Mid-century pours were often generous. But the fill they sit on was compacted to the standards of the day, on sloped ground, and it's been consolidating ever since. When we lift a patio like that, the slurry doesn't just raise the slab. It fills every soft pocket underneath and cures harder than the clay around it, so the patio ends up bedded better than the day it was poured.
The bill, plainly
Most residential patios in Lakewood run $400 to $1,200 to lift, which is about a quarter of what tearing out and re-pouring costs. We're on site 2 to 4 hours and you can walk on it the same day. A few things move the number within that range:
- How far the slab has dropped, since deeper settlement takes more material
- Square footage and how many pieces the patio is in
- Access for the pump hose on tight or steep side yards
If the patio has broken into five or more pieces, we'll tell you at the estimate that replacement is the smarter spend. Lifting a shattered slab is a repair that doesn't hold, and we don't sell those.
While the truck is parked out front
Patio jobs on sloped lots almost always reveal the same accomplice: a downspout dumping at the slab corner, or yard grading that aims runoff across the patio's base. We'll point out exactly what's feeding the settlement and what to change, usually a downspout extension or a small grading tweak. Solve the water and the lift lasts. We've re-checked patios we raised decades ago that haven't moved since. If a gas grill, a hot tub pad, or a heavy planter has been parked on the low corner for years, mention it when we quote; concentrated loads on softened fill speed up settlement, and knowing the history helps us decide how much material the low side needs.
Stamped and colored patios lift the same way; the holes get patched with color-matched concrete. More detail on the method is on our main patio leveling page.
Get a number before you get a shovel
Before you price a demolition, have Howard look at it. The estimate is free, in person, and honest, and the lift comes with a 5-year written warranty. Call (303) 526-2222 and we'll meet you on the patio. Bring coffee; we'll bring the steel rod and tell you what's really going on under there.