Concrete Leveling Near Me Edmonton

Let me clear up the confusion before we go any further, because it costs Edmonton homeowners real money. Mudjacking and polyurethane polyjacking both raise a sunken slab, but they are not the same job, and on our clay they do not age the same way. I am going to lay all three options side by side, slurry mudjacking, polyurethane foam, and the bag of “self levelling concrete” at the hardware store, and tell you honestly which one suits which situation. The short version: we lift with foam, not mud, and the reason is what is sitting under your driveway.

That distinction matters here more than almost anywhere in Canada. Edmonton sits on roughly 25 percent lacustrine clay with a plasticity index measured as high as 44 percent, the kind of expansive ground that swells five to ten percent when wet and shrinks back when it dries. Pump tonnes of wet slurry onto soil that is already struggling to carry load and you can accelerate the very settlement you were trying to fix. That is the whole argument in one sentence, and it is why the method you pick is the decision, not just the price.

Mudjacking, polyjacking, or a DIY bag: which concrete leveling method actually fits?

Here is the centrepiece comparison. Read across the three cards and notice the “who it suits” line at the bottom of each, because that is where most of the bad decisions get made. Two of these are professional lifting methods. The third is not a lifting method at all, and confusing it for one is the single most common mistake I see.

The honest takeaway from those three cards: if your slab has actually dropped, settled at a corner, or rocks when you step on it, you are choosing between mudjacking and polyjacking, and on our soil I lift with foam. If your indoor floor is merely wavy under good footing, the bag of self levelling compound is genuinely the right answer and you do not need me at all. The cost of either professional lift depends on slab size, void depth, and access, and I keep the dollar figures in one place so they stay current; you can see the price ranges for slab lifting rather than a number I might forget to update here.

Is “self leveling concrete” the same as concrete leveling?

No, and this trips up a lot of searches, so it is worth its own answer. “Self levelling concrete” or “self levelling floor compound” is a pourable cement product for smoothing interior subfloors. You mix it, pour it, and it flows out flat to give you a clean surface for finished flooring. It does nothing to lift a slab that has settled, because it works from the top down, not from underneath.

“Concrete levelling,” the service Edmonton homeowners usually mean when a driveway, garage floor, patio, sidewalk, or front step has sunk, is the opposite: we inject material under the existing slab to raise it back to grade. So if you came here after pricing bags at the hardware store for a sunken driveway, that product will not do the job. And if you came here wanting to smooth a basement floor for vinyl plank, you want the bag, not a foam injection crew. Knowing which intent you are in saves a wasted afternoon either way.

How does the polyjacking process work, start to finish?

The lift itself is quick, but the order of operations is what protects you from paying twice. We inspect the cause, fix it right, then verify the lift held, and that on-site inspection is not a formality.

Inspect the cause. Before we drill a single port, Tim comes out and inspects the slab on site to read what the void under it looks like, find where the soil is soft, and judge why the slab actually dropped. That on-site inspection is real diagnosis: it tells us how much foam the void needs and where the settlement is actually coming from. Cheaper crews inject blind; we look first. The visual inspection is free.

Fix it right. We drill small ports, inject the two-part polyurethane, and watch the slab rise in real time to its original grade. The foam expands to fill every cavity the inspection revealed, cures to working strength in roughly 15 minutes, and we patch the coin-sized holes. You are usually back to parking or walking on it the same day.

Verify. We re-check the lift so you can see the void is filled and the slab is supported, not just cosmetically nudged up. That verification step is the difference between a slab that stays put and one that quietly drops again over the next freeze-thaw cycle.

When should I level concrete versus leave it alone?

Not every uneven slab needs lifting today, but a few of them are telling you the ground is moving, and that is worth catching early. A driveway or walk that has dropped enough to pond water against your foundation is worth acting on, because that water feeds the clay cycle that caused the drop. A garage pad or basement slab that has separated from the wall, or a front step pulling away from the house, points to settlement you want diagnosed before it widens. A trip hazard at a sidewalk joint is both a safety and a liability issue.

On the other hand, a hairline surface crack on a slab that has not actually dropped, or a floor that is merely rough, is usually cosmetic. The judgment call is whether the slab moved or just aged. If a slab is sinking, it is often the same soil story showing up elsewhere on the property, so it pays to know the early indicators; our guide to spotting slab settlement early walks through what to watch for around the house before a small drop becomes a structural one.