Curt Janzen of Beyond Lifting explains why concrete sinks after lifting and how to prevent it. Polyurethane foam works better than traditional mud-jacking because it's lighter, doesn't erode soil, and leaves smaller holes. Proper soil testing and choosing the right contractor matter more than the material alone.
Have you ever seen a video of concrete being lifted and ever wondered, man, how does it stay there? Is the ground going to keep on going up and down? Are there going to be long-term problems? Well, watch this video and find out. Hi there, my name is Curt. I'm with Beyond Lifting. I am standing in front of a house where we're going to be actually coming here to lift today, um, and in this video we're talking a little bit about why pads fail, why do they fall, why they can lift back up, and why sometimes after they've lifted they They actually fail again. All right, I want to talk with you a little bit about mud jacking versus foam jacking. Mud jacking is an old-school way of lifting concrete pads. Does it work? 100%. You can lift concrete pads with mud. We like foam better, and the reason why we like polyurethane foams better is for a few reasons. One, it's a way lighter product. When you're talking about a cubic foot of something weighing 100 pounds plus, or something that weighs 2 pounds plus, obviously you're going to take the lighter weight product because you already got ground that is compacting, is degraded, already has a lot of pressure on it, and you don't want to put a bunch of extra weight on there. The other reason why we like it is it doesn't ever erode. Polyurethane foam doesn't erode. So if water hits it, it doesn't affect it. But if you've got a sand-based grout like a mudjacking material, if you have drainage issues and water's hitting that, obviously You're gonna have troubles with that pad re-sinking down again. With foam, the only thing that breaks down polyurethane foam is UV light. And when it's underneath the concrete, it'll never see the light of day. It doesn't need the shades. It could just live there forever and it will never degrade. The last reason why we really like it is for the fact that aesthetically it looks better. When we have a nice big driveway like this, do you want about 20 or 30 pop can size holes that you can see those patches, or do you want holes the size of a dime? Obviously, with our polyurethane foam, we're using a smaller injection port, which makes the end product look that much better for you. Now, if you've got some drainage issues, we don't want, you know, your downspouts coming from the side and going back underneath the pads. That causes a problem because even though our foam may not ever erode, you might get the ground underneath it washing away, causing voids and everything like that. If you have a situation like that, we also have another foam product called Fill Foam that might be absolutely perfect for what you're looking for. Fill Foam is a pre-expanded foam that can fill large voids and water will never disrupt it, and it's basically bulletproof. Did you know that the real enemy of holding this pad in place is actually the ground that's underneath? Well, what do you do when the problem isn't just inches below the concrete pad, but feet or maybe even meters below. Well, we have a solution for that as well. What we like to do on most commercial jobs and even some residential projects is we do something called a DCP test. It's driving a rod into the ground and finding out where those real soft spots and bad areas are. Once you figure out where the soft spots are, we can actually drive in rods, hollow rods into the ground and inject polyurethane foam at the exact location where we need to. This strengthens the soil, binds everything together, and creates this really rock-hard surface that we can then lift the pad on top and not ever have to worry about that pad falling down again. How do you spot a bad quote as a homeowner? Well, there's a few things that I'd be looking out for, for sure. One of them is just looking at the conditions of the quote. Make sure that the company that you're working with has a really good standard of what they're doing, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, What they cover, what they don't cover. You obviously want to feel 100% comfortable with all of that. The second thing you want to compare is how much material are they actually budgeting into putting underneath this pad. Most concrete lifting companies will have it that they're going to go up to X amount of material, and if by chance they don't get the lift they want, they're going to add more, which you end up paying for at the end of the day. You need to be completely comfortable with what that process is. how much material is gonna be used, and why they're gonna use the material that they're gonna use. Sometimes we'll be going up against our competition and they might have 50 pounds of material and we think it's gonna take 300 pounds of material. Well, obviously our quotes are gonna look very differently. At the end of the day, you're just gonna have unexpected costs to you by choosing the wrong contractor. So make sure that you understand that very clearly beforehand. The last thing you wanna look at is just reviews, making sure that the company that you're picking is in good standings, people like them, they're saying good things about them, they're responsive. We would never, ever, ever say that we're a perfect company, but boy do we try. And we want to make sure that at the end of the day, we're creating a safe place and a happy person. If you want to make sure that your concrete lifting project lasts, I would highly recommend looking at our 6 Essential Question Checklist. Where it can help you have a great conversation with the contractors that come to your place and take a look at your job. If you have any questions, obviously reach out to us. We'd be more than happy to help you out. Now you know what causes your concrete to get lifted and to possibly fail. And after you look at that checklist of the 6 essential questions to ask your contractor, I believe you're going to feel full faith that you're going to pick the right person, the right company to help you out. Also like to ask you to like and subscribe to this channel. That really helps us out, uh, to produce more great content for people like you.
