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Polyurethane vs mudjacking for sunken concrete

Posted Jul 01, 2024 in Concrete Raising

When need­ing to raise and lev­el con­crete slabs that have sunk such as side­walks, dri­ve­ways, and patios; peo­ple some­times get con­fused in select­ing the best out of two com­mon meth­ods: polyurethane con­crete rais­ing and mud jack­ing. We are here to pro­vide you the dif­fer­ence between the two procedures.

Polyurethane con­crete rais­ing vs. mudjacking

Talk­ing about the con­ven­tion­al con­struc­tion con­trac­tor expe­ri­ences, they believe that mud jack­ing is some­times more eco­nom­i­cal than the polyurethane con­crete rais­ing. The best rea­son they give is that the mate­ri­als used are inex­pen­sive and many times cus­tomers choose the option that appears to be the most inexpensive.

Dura­bil­i­ty

Although the mud jack­ing method can present low­er upfront costs on some projects, long-term reli­a­bil­i­ty can be an issue. Polyurethane con­crete rais­ing foam is much more durable than mud jack­ing. This is because that polyurethane con­crete rais­ing uses a sophis­ti­cat­ed two-part poly­mer that’s specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped for rais­ing and sup­port­ing con­crete slabs. Mud­jack­ing meth­ods do not typ­i­cal­ly rely on pre­cise mea­sure­ments when blend­ing mate­ri­als into slurries.

The size of the hole

The sec­ond main dif­fer­ence between the two is the injec­tion whole size. Polyurethane con­crete rais­ing uses a small hole which is not read­i­ly notice­able where­as, the mud­jack­ing method requires a hole that is much larg­er in size that is notice­able and does not look good. The hole used when mud­jack­ing is 1 – 2 inch­es in diameter.

Vis­cos­i­ty of a substance

There is a dif­fer­ence in the states of mat­ter that is inject­ed into the holes. Polyurethane is inject­ed as a thin liq­uid. This pro­motes con­sis­ten­cy and flow. The flu­id trav­els eas­i­ly between the slab and its sub-base allow­ing for prop­er cov­er­age and void filling.

In com­par­i­son to this, mud­jack­ing uses a much stiffer, semi-sol­id sub­stance which can­not fill the small­er voids like polyurethane.

Appear­ance

Since polyurethane con­crete rais­ing uses small holes which are hard­ly notice­able, the appear­ance of the con­crete is not sig­nif­i­cant­ly affected.

Strength

Since mud­jack­ing con­trac­tors take it upon them­selves to cre­ate their slur­ries any­way they wish, it is not pos­si­ble to deter­mine a gen­er­al strength fac­tor for the mud­jack­ing method. Some con­trac­tors claim to be using cement, while oth­ers use only water and crushed lime­stone which pro­vides lit­tle to no bind­ing strength.

Polyurethane lift­ing mate­ri­als are cre­at­ed under close tol­er­ances and have a very mea­sur­able and con­sis­tent crush resis­tance. In fact, polyurethane lift­ing foams are strong enough that many Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion projects require the use of polyurethane, and do not enter­tain mud­jack­ing bids.

There­fore, when eval­u­at­ing polyurethane con­crete rais­ing ver­sus mud­jack­ing, polyurethane is more reli­able and less cost­ing in the long run.

Fam­i­ly Water­proof­ing Solu­tions has the exper­tise to eval­u­ate your uneven, cracked con­crete slabs, allow­ing you to quick­ly enjoy using those areas around your home. If you would like to learn more about con­crete lev­el­ing ser­vices, con­tact us today for your free esti­mate.