Concrete Repair & Replacement in Sioux Falls, SD

Concrete repair and replacement in Sioux Falls usually starts after a hard winter, when the thaw shows what the freeze did. Panels have sunk near the downspout, the surface by the garage door is flaking away, a crack that was hairline in the fall is now wide enough to catch a heel. The first question is not how to fix it but whether it is worth fixing. The answer depends on what failed: the surface, the slab itself, or the ground under it.

Reading the damage

• Scaling and spalling: the top layer flakes off and exposes stone. Common where salt and freeze-thaw meet, and on concrete that was overworked, watered down or not air-entrained. Shallow scaling can sometimes be resurfaced; deep or widespread scaling means the concrete itself is weak.
• Sunken or tipped panels: the slab is usually intact but the soil under it settled or washed out. Leveling can lift a sound panel back into place.
• Heaving: a slab that rises in winter and drops in spring has water freezing under it. Fixing drainage is part of any repair.
• Cracks: narrow, stable cracks can be filled. Cracks that are wide, still moving or offset are signs the base or the slab has failed.
• Crumbling edges and corners: often from thin, unsupported edges or traffic off the slab.

Leveling a sunken slab

If a panel is in one piece and the concrete is sound, it can often be raised instead of replaced. Mudjacking pumps a cement slurry under the slab through holes drilled in it. Polyurethane foam leveling uses smaller holes and a lightweight foam. HomeGuide puts mudjacking at about $4 to $9 per square foot and foam at about $8 to $25, against about $6 to $15 for full slab replacement. Leveling makes sense on solid panels. It does not fix a flaking surface or a slab broken into pieces.

When replacement is the better money

If most of a driveway or patio is scaled, cracked through in several places, or sunk unevenly, replacing it usually costs less over the next twenty years than repeated patching and leveling. A replacement also lets us fix what caused the failure: soft soil, no base, poor drainage, no joints or a mix that was never meant for freeze-thaw. We often replace only the bad sections, cutting at existing joints, and leave sound panels in place.

Repairs we do

• Routing and sealing cracks so water and salt stay out
• Patching holes, broken edges and corners
• Resurfacing lightly scaled concrete with a bonded overlay where the slab underneath is sound
• Cutting out and replacing individual failed panels
• Leveling settled panels
• Correcting drainage that caused the failure, such as downspouts that dump onto the slab

Call (605) 453-6985

Keeping repairs from coming back

A repair is only as good as the reason it was needed going away. Extend downspouts so water lands in the yard, not at the slab edge. Keep the joint between the slab and the house sealed. Re-seal the surface every few years and go easy on de-icers. Look the concrete over each fall and fill small cracks before winter, when they are cheapest to deal with.