Welcome to the concrete pool deck repair section of Concrete Jack’s website. Concrete Jack is a concrete leveling contractor serving customers throughout Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and West Virginia. Our process works to repair settled or uneven concrete around pools and other structures by injecting a sand-based grout or expanding polyurethane foam under the concrete to support it and raise it back to level. In general, Concrete Jack’s concrete leveling process (also known as slab jacking, mud jacking, concrete raising or pressure grouting) costs less than half the price of replacement. In addition, you can use your pool deck right up to when we start repairs and start using it right afterwards, without compromising the integrity or quality of the repair. Using the foam jacking process of injecting high density polyurethane foam under settled pool decks, Concrete Jack can raise up to 100 linear feet of pool deck dropped against the coping an hour.
Most repairs take less than a day (some large pools or those with significant voids or air spaces under the concrete can take longer) and there is no need to drain your pool, tear up any landscaping or disrupt your use of the surrounding area. As the largest concrete leveling company in our market, Concrete Jack has the ability to put multiple crews on a job at once in order to expedite repairs and minimize any downtime, and has the experience and skills to ensure all of our customers the best, most economical solutions.
What Causes Pool Deck Settlement
Settlement of the backfill material placed around your pool is the most common cause of settlement around pools. When pools are constructed, the hole that’s dug is often a couple of feet larger in all directions in order to create a safe working environment. After the walls are constructed, loose material is placed around the pool in preparation for pouring the concrete pool deck. Over time, this material settles, leaving voids, or air spaces under the concrete. The concrete can’t hold itself up with inadequate support from below, though sometimes there are braces installed during construction to hold up the concrete which can do a somewhat reliable job of this.
As the backfill material consolidates over time, the concrete will start to drop. In most cases this is a slow process, though sometimes concrete will experience a sudden drop, but this is rare and doesn’t really cause any problems for the repair process. Settlement of the concrete pool deck will often result in leaks at skimmers, as they begin to bear the weight of the concrete slabs that are no longer supported by the soil under them. Concrete Jack’s process of lifting the slabs and filling under them helps to relieve pressure exerted on the skimmers, which can easily be patched with underwater curing epoxy available online or at a local pool supply house.
The Concrete Jack Solution
To correct the problem, Concrete Jack’s concrete leveling crews inject material under the concrete slabs surrounding the pool to first fill all of the voids. After the voids are filled, continuing to pump material under the concrete starts to push the concrete back up to its original level. The pressure required to lift concrete using Concrete Jack’s process is quite low—often as low was 10 pounds per square inch. As a comparison, most car tires are inflated to 60 pounds per square inch of pressure. Expanding polyurethane foam can be used to raise settled concrete around concrete pools in most circumstances.
Concrete Jack has successfully raised pool decks that have dropped more than seven inches, and we have filled voids and air spaces under pool decks that were as deep as two feet! Our crews lift all kinds of different concrete structures other than pool decks, too—from sidewalks and floors inside of homes to the occasional interstate highway ramp. By working on all different types of slabs, our crews, all of which are comprised completely of Concrete Jack employees, are able to establish best practices that work for all types of concrete slabs and tailor specific solutions to every individual job based on their years of experience.