Why Replacing Your Sunken Concrete Is Your Worst Option

Your concrete driveway or sidewalk is sunken in places. You’re considering tearing it all out and starting over. But, you wonder if that’s the best choice or if you’re missing something. Are there any drawbacks to replacing concrete? What are the other options for handling sunken concrete besides replacement?

At Anchor Foundation Repair, we don’t fix things that don’t need fixin’ and we don’t try to sell you stuff that you don’t need. We used to do concrete removal and replacement. We’ve also helped thousands of homeowners handle their sunken concrete another way. So, we know both sides of this coin very well and can fill you in on your sunken concrete options all around.

In this article, we review the major drawbacks of full concrete replacement and recognize the times when it’s an appropriate solution. Then we discuss other available options and point you in the direction of choices that might work better for you if replacement sounds like too much after all.

When Replacing Your Sunken Concrete Is Your Best Option

We’re not here to diss concrete replacement entirely, sometimes it’s what you need to do. Here are some legitimate reasons to completely remove your old concrete surface and replace it with new stuff:

• When the concrete surface is badly broken, crumbling, and beyond use,
• When the concrete is the wrong shape or size and you want something bigger and nicer,
• When it matters aesthetically for all the panels to match, and
• In all of these cases, that you won’t be unduly inconvenienced by a construction zone and lengthy process resulting in inaccessibility to entrances and pathways.

Removing and replacing a concrete surface takes a considerable amount of time and is more expensive than other options. So a full replacement really has to be worth it and needed from the time, money, and trouble perspective, especially for homeowners.

In these situations, new concrete is your best bet as long as you have alternatives to deal with not having said surface for a time. If you have somewhere else to park your car for a couple of weeks, or you have an alternative entrance to your home that will be easy to use temporarily, then full replacement is doable.

Drawbacks to Removing and Replacing Sunken Concrete

There are also drawbacks to fully removing and replacing your sunken concrete driveway or sidewalk. We hinted at a couple of them earlier, but here are all the reasons why full removal and replacement is likely the worst option for most residential homeowners:

• The cost of replacing is usually 3 to 4 times as expensive as reasonable alternatives,
• A week or more of downtime where the area is a construction zone and the concrete needs time to cure as well,
• If replacing select panels, the new concrete appearance will not match the old concrete,
• The potential for more mess, debris, and yard destruction can result in other additional costs for landscaping and/or irrigation improvements and repairs,
• The jackhammering and removal alone might be enough to drive you or your neighbors crazy, but other large equipment and early-morning concrete pours might add to the annoyance as well.
• This option is not very “green” because you’re tearing out material that’s still usable and creating volumes of concrete and rebar debris that might take up undue space in the local landfill. In other words, it might not get reused or recycled.

For your everyday homeowner, the higher costs alone are a deterrent to full replacement. The excess, noise, mess, and major construction zone stuff are big considerations as well. How long can you not have use of your whole driveway? How long is it going to be tolerable to have to enter your home through your back patio door? Know what I mean?

 7 Options to Fix Sunken Concrete Instead of Replacement

You’ve got other options to handle the sunken concrete around your home as well. Costs range from free, to dirt cheap, to more expensive, but none of these options cost nearly as much as replacement. Here are a few things you could do instead of replacing your settled concrete:

1. Do nothing – avoid the area if it’s not hurting anyone
2. Do basically nothing – mark the tripping hazard with paint or tape to prevent falls
3. Do next to nothing – cover it with an outdoor rug, mask it with flower pots, hide it
4. Grind it – rent a concrete grinder and grind down the high spots and smooth transitions
5. Top it – frost the top of your sunken concrete with new concrete and hope it stays
6. Select breakouts – break out just enough concrete to smooth transitions with new stuff
7. Raise it – look into concrete lifting options like mud jacking or polyjacking

Not all of these options are great, I never said they were gonna be! But hey, sometimes masking the issue or doing a quick fix is enough to handle some problems. But if the sunken concrete is not hideable and is causing injuries and other more serious issues, then the do-nothing, easy stuff is not going to cut it.

For more details on some of these sunken concrete fixes, check this out: What Can I Do About Sunken or Uneven Concrete Near My Home: 6 Options.

The Most Efficient Choice for Handling Sunken Concrete

If you want to handle your sunken concrete problems efficiently (i.e. with short timelines and reasonable costs) and without tearing it all out and starting over, some kind of concrete raising is your best option. You deal with the issue effectively by getting rid of tripping hazards and uneven spots and making use of concrete that’s still pretty good.

BONUS: Concrete lifting is a quick process. Most projects can be completed in half a day, one full day, or a couple of days for bigger jobs. Plus, you can use your concrete surface right away for walking. For parking and driving, you have to wait a few hours or up to a day or two.

Both mud jacking and polyjacking are available choices that raise sunken concrete up from below by injecting material underneath the surface. With mud jacking, the material is a slurry mixture made from topsoil, water, and Portland cement. With polyjacking, the material is an expanding polyurethane foam chemical solution.

Each concrete slab jacking method has its pros and cons, so there’s more to consider. Both concrete lifting processes cost less than replacement and preserve/reuse concrete that is in otherwise good condition (other than the fact that it is sunken).

Here are detailed articles on each of these methods for you to peruse:

More About Mud Jacking

More About Polyjacking (Note: this article is geared more towards foundation repair uses, but the principles still apply)

More Choices to Make to Fix Your Sunken Driveway or Sidewalk

So now that you know why full replacement is your least favorable option, does concrete raising sound like a good choice for you? If so, you’ve still got another decision to make.

At Anchor Foundation Repair, we don’t fix things that don’t need fixin’, and we don’t try to sell you stuff you don’t need. After 40+ years in business, that’s what’s best for our Brazos Valley community and for exceptional homeowners like you. We’re here to help guide you through your slab settlement problems, whether it’s your foundation or the flatwork around your home.

You’re going to have to pick between mud jacking and polyjacking to raise your sunken concrete back into position and back into shape. So, check out this article for a full comparison between these two viable concrete raising techniques: Mud Jacking vs. Polyjacking Concrete Repair (Cost, Material, Features).