Mud Jacking? (how much, buying a home, buying)

[tiffanyj31]

Has anyone had any experience with mud jacking? I have a front stoop, sidewalk and concrete decking around a pool that needs to be leveled. My home inspector suggested mud jacking. I've never seen it done nor do I know how much it costs.

Does anyone know anything about it, had any experience or can you recommend a company that does it?

TIA
Tiffany

[Metallisteve]

I would be concerned with why they need leveling. Soil doesn't just evaporate or somehow disappear. Near a pool, the reason is usually obvious: pool water is either leaking out of the pool walls (e.g. a crack) or is constantly being splashed out of the pool and finding a concentrated route to underneath the deck. Out front, the sidewalk and stoop are possibly being undermined by rain runoff from a downspout or other concentrated flow (e.g. a large portion of the front yard draining to one point). In any case, the source needs to be identified and rectified before any fix...otherwise, you're throwing money down the toilet. Don't just fix it to meet the home inspector's preference, only to be stuck with the problem again in a year or so, long after the purchase.

[flexysteve]

Are you selling the home or buying a home or do you live there and just want to fix it?

I agree with Metallisteve, you need to find the source of the problem first and fix that, otherwise you're just throwing money away.

[idecharlotte]

I'm a residential structural engineer. I think by "mud jacking" they imply pressure grouting which is essentially to lift the slab by installing pressurized grout underneath it. This is not always the best idea, especially around pools. Settlement around a pool often exists because the fill soil had not been properly tamped to begin with. Settlement begins, which leads to water infiltration which exacerbates the problem. Hire a structural or geotechnical engineer to evaluate the problem and determine the best course of action before hiring a contractor or foundation repair specialist. Costs for the inspection usually range anywhere from $350 for a basic site visit to $1000 if extensive soils testing is warranted. But it's better to have an appropriate engineered solution before throwing money at it. You can pm me if you want to talk further.

[smclarke4]

We had this work done last year and had a structural engineer plus a host of other "experts" in. We finally surmised that the problem was when the pool was being dug out the old trees that were left behind by the builder started to breakdown and the clay started to shift. Our pool sunk on one of the sides and we ended up pulling out the pool and fixing it. We filled in the spaces with some sort of aggregate and soil and relaid part of the deck. It ended up costing us $13000 but we had had a quote to fill in the pool and that was going to cost us $7000. In the end it boiled down to shoddy workmanship. Good luck with yours.

[tiffanyj31]

This is a house we're buying. These were just a few things noted by the inspector. He didn't seem to think they were major issues, just cosmetic really. Once we're moved in, we plan on having things looked into deeper, just to make sure nothing NEEDS to be taken care of immediately.

The sidewalk appears to be raised on one side by a tree root. We're planning to remove the tree eventually, and will need to level the sidewalk at some point, when the roots start to break down. We probably have a while on this one.

The porch concerned us a little, since it looks to be shifted a little as well. It doesn't look like it's attached to the house, almost as if it were added on later, as it's own structure. Possible that it doesn't have proper footings? Again just speculation.

As for the pool decking, I'm assuming we're having the same problem as smclarke4 above, where the roots of trees that were removed to put the pool in (24 years ago), have broken down and are now allowing the decking to sink. It's a vinyl pool, with concrete decking that has cracks and some shifting up and down.

Is there a way to remove the decking, keep the pool in-tact and fill/tamp the soil down, and then replace decking? or would we have to take the pool out to fix this?

Looks like we're going to need a crew of professionals to handle this.

Thanks for the info guys.