Stopping a Two Level Concrete Patio from Settling in Waynesville, Ohio

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024 by Jack Purdon

Challenge

This homeowner had a beautiful home with a matching concrete patio to go along with it. However, the patio's primary foundation was sinking into the ground, causing the lighter secondary part of the patio to break away. It was also causing cracking in a lot of places on the patio. When the customer called us, he said he called three companies before us, and none of them would help him out. We vowed to help him save his beautiful patio from sinking into the ground. We also noticed that the black fencing had become distorted, something we could fix by raising the foundation of the patio back.

Solution

We proposed installing 16 piers all around this very large patio by using highly advanced calculations and tenured expertise to be able to guarantee that this patio won't ever sink again. 12 of them would be able to be dug up by using an excavator, which makes the process a lot easier. The other 4 were going to have to be hand dug from the secondary part of the patio to be able to reach the footers of the primary part of the patio. Once the piers are attached and drove deep into solid soil, we are able to use a handheld hydraulic device that is able to raise the piers and bring the foundation back to where it was originally. This process closed gaps in the cracks and helped fix the distorted fencing. After carefully raising parts of the foundation back, we then concealed the piers completely. The hand dug piers were concealed with a concrete layer on top. Our crew did a great job here of trying their best to match the rest of the existing concrete. The other piers dug by the excavator were backfilled with soil. We then ran over the soil with the excavator, which does a great job of leveling out the back filled soil. The result of the job is a saved patio with minimal disturbance to the yard.

Here's where we were going to have to hand dig through the concrete to attach the piers to the footers of the primary part of the patio on the left. You can also see that the black metal fencing had become distorted as a result of the settling in the back.

This was once we attached the piers to the footers and raised the foundation back using a hydraulic hand-held device. You'll notice that this work can get pretty dirty so it's very important that we clean up properly.

This is after we re-poured the concrete over the piers. A very fine job of concealing the piers completely.

This is where we could use an excavator to dig for the piers along the outside wall.

Here's the same wall from a different angle. Built up ground water in the trenches can't stop us from getting the job done.

Here's the same outside wall after it's backfilled. The excavator does a great job at flattening the soil back.

Here's a corner where you can see stair step cracking in the brick.

Here's after we attached piers in the same corner.

Here's an after of the piers backfilled and concealed on that same corner. The cracking has closed pretty well.

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Stopping a Two Level Concrete Patio from Settling in Waynesville, Ohio

Challenge

Solution

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