Wheat Ridge backyards were built for patios. The lots run deep, the trees came up alongside the houses, and behind almost every brick ranch there's a concrete pad that has hosted birthdays since the 1960s. When one of those pads starts leaning toward the back door, homeowners ask us the same question: is sixty-year-old concrete even worth saving? Usually, yes. The pour was good. It's the ground under it that moved, and we can put the ground back.
Why the corner by the house drops first
Patios on these lots were poured tight against foundations that had been backfilled a decade or two earlier, and that backfill was still compressing when the patio went in. Add a downspout emptying at the corner, which is where builders of that era liked to put them, and you get the classic Wheat Ridge patio: high at the yard edge, low against the house, with a crack splitting the difference. The slab didn't fail. It followed the fill down.
A slab that never really dries out
The mature maples and ash that make these backyards worth sitting in also keep the patio damp. A pad that sees two hours of direct sun a day holds moisture through fall, freezes wet all winter, and then waits out one of the slowest spring dry-outs in the metro. Every freeze-thaw pass loosens the clay under the slab a little more. If your patio joints grow moss and the surface stays slick into May, the soil underneath is running the same schedule, and soft soil is what lets concrete sink.
Tipped toward the house is the expensive direction
A patio pitched at the foundation sends every storm and every snowmelt against your basement wall. On houses this age, that water finds the original window wells and the seam where the wall meets the footing. We've lifted plenty of patios for people who called about a damp basement, not about the concrete. Getting the slab pitched back away from the house is cheap compared to what standing water does over time, and we wrote up how that chain plays out in how uneven concrete leads to water damage.
The price, the hours, and what moves them
A patio lift runs about a fraction of what a tear-out and re-pour costs, quoted free and in person. Trevor will tell you at the estimate when you can walk on it and when the grill goes back. What moves the number within that range:
- How far the slab has dropped and how much slurry it takes to fill the gap.
- Square footage of the pad and how many pieces it's in.
- Access to the backyard for our hose from the truck at the curb.
Stamped and colored pads lift the same way as plain gray. We patch the 1-1/2" holes flush, and after a season of weather most people quit noticing them.
Fall is the smart season to do this
You can lift a patio any month of the year, and we do, but the timing that pays best in this city is late summer or fall. Get the slab back to grade and pitched away from the house before the first hard freeze, and the winter's meltwater sheds into the yard instead of pooling at the foundation. Wait until spring and the slab spends another whole winter funneling water at your basement wall while freeze-thaw keeps working the base underneath it. Same repair, same price, very different winter.
When lifting is the wrong call
If a patio has broken into many small pieces, we won't quote a lift, because the pieces rise unevenly and the repair doesn't hold. Same answer if a live tree root is actively pushing the slab: raising concrete over a root that's still growing buys a year, maybe two. In both cases we'll say so at the estimate and you'll have an honest answer instead of an invoice.
Start with a free look
Trevor walks every job in person before we quote it, and the estimate costs nothing. If your back patio has started tilting toward the house, call (303) 526-2222 or request a patio quote online and we'll get it back to grade before the next freeze does more work on it.