Sunken driveways, tripping sidewalks, tilted patios, and settled garage slabs — lifted back to level with high-density polyurethane foam or traditional mudjacking. Cures in 15 minutes. Drive on it the same day.
A licensed local crew — usually out in 24 to 72 hours. Written scope, fixed price, no pressure.
Concrete lifting in Ballantyne is a very specific product for a very specific problem. It is not for crawlspace work — crawls have brick or CMU piers, not slabs — but it comes up constantly in this ZIP because of the era of construction and the way builders poured the exterior flatwork. Every 1990s and 2000s Ballantyne tract home has a poured concrete driveway, front walk, back patio, garage-to-crawl-access threshold, and often a pool deck or an outdoor kitchen slab. Twenty-plus years of Piedmont red clay expansion and contraction, freeze-thaw cycles, and undermining from lot drainage that pitches the wrong way have moved all of that concrete. Some of it just settled evenly and looks fine. Some of it settled unevenly and now the front walk trips people, the driveway approach cracked at the garage lip, or the back patio slopes toward the house and dumps water at the foundation.
Two weeks back I was at a 1997 Providence Country Club home off Elm Ln. Owner called because the front walk had settled 1-1/2 inches at the joint between the entry stoop and the walk itself. Every guest who visited tripped on it. The stoop was pinned to the house — it was not going anywhere — but the walk slab in front of it had settled because the fill under it had never been properly compacted. Poly lift with HMI TerraThane 24024 through five 3/8-inch injection ports drilled through the walk, brought the walk back to level with the stoop in about 40 minutes of injection time. The homeowner drove on it that afternoon. That is what concrete lifting is good for in Ballantyne — settled exterior flatwork on a home where the underlying structural foundation is fine.
What it is not for: interior slab work in a house without a crawl (Ballantyne is 99 percent crawlspace construction, so this rarely applies), foundation lifting on a settled corner (that is helical pier work and it is a different scope entirely), or any situation where the concrete has cracked into pieces small enough that lifting them will not restore a continuous surface. The rule I use on the inspection is: if the slab is settled but structurally intact and lifting it will restore a usable surface, poly lift is the right call. If the slab is cracked into more than three or four pieces or if the settlement is caused by ongoing soil movement that has not been addressed, replacement is the right call. Poly lift is a repair, not a workaround for a soil problem.
The Ballantyne pattern for concrete lifting calls is pretty consistent: front walks between the driveway and the entry stoop, driveway approach panels at the garage, pool decks around the coping, back patios that started to slope toward the house, and the occasional garage floor slab that settled because a plumbing leak washed out the fill under it. Ballantyne Country Club, Piper Glen, and Providence Country Club HOAs all have architectural review considerations for any exterior flatwork replacement, but poly lift is not visible and does not trigger their process — the injection ports are 3/8-inch holes that get patched with color-matched concrete grout after the lift is complete, and by the time it cures nobody can tell the work was done.
Every concrete lifting job in Ballantyne starts with a real diagnostic — I need to understand why the slab settled before I can commit to lifting it. On a Piper Glen front walk that has dropped 1-1/2 inches at the entry stoop joint, the cause is usually one of three things: original fill was never properly compacted during the 1994 build and the sub-base finally consolidated under 20 years of foot traffic; a downspout has been discharging water at the walk edge and slowly washing fill out from under it; or a plumbing supply line has been leaking under the walk and the water has undermined the sub-base. The fix is not the same for each case. Poly lift will bring the slab back to level regardless, but if a leaking supply line is the cause, we need to fix the leak first or the slab will settle again.
On the inspection I probe the sub-base condition through the joint if there is one, check the exterior drainage against the walk and downspout discharge locations, look for any active water staining on the adjacent concrete, and — critically — check the underlying home foundation to make sure the settlement is limited to the flatwork and not part of a bigger foundation problem. On the 2003 Rea Rd job I mentioned in the intro, the front walk had settled but the entry stoop pinned to the house was solid, which told me the foundation was fine and the walk was a standalone settlement. Different story if the stoop had also dropped — that would be a helical pier conversation, not a poly lift.
Injection process itself is straightforward on Ballantyne exterior flatwork. Cut 3/8-inch holes on approximately 4-foot centers with a hammer drill and diamond core bit, laid out based on the specific settlement pattern of the slab. Insert HMI TerraThane 24024 injection ports and start pumping the two-part polyurethane through a metered mixing gun. The foam expands to roughly 25 times its liquid volume, fills voids in the sub-base, hardens in 15 to 20 minutes, and lifts the slab as it cures. On a typical Ballantyne front walk with 1 to 2 inches of settlement across a 40-foot run, we might use 8 to 12 injection ports and 45 minutes of actual injection time. The homeowner can walk on the slab within 30 minutes of the last pour and drive on a driveway approach within a couple of hours.
Cleanup and finish is the part most contractors shortcut. Ports get plugged with color-matched concrete grout — we mix a small batch to match the specific gray of the aged Ballantyne concrete, which is usually a warm gray that has weathered over 20-plus years rather than the cool gray of a fresh pour. The grout gets tooled flat with the surrounding surface and allowed to cure. Nine months later nobody can tell where the ports were. On golf-course-facing walks in Providence Country Club where the ARC has been picky about aesthetics, this finish work is what keeps the homeowner from getting a letter.
Material spec is HMI TerraThane 24024 across the board — this is the standard structural-grade two-part polyurethane injection foam for concrete lifting in the Charlotte market. It cures to a 40-plus PCF density, achieves compressive strength around 60 PSI at full cure, and holds a lifted slab in position for the design life of the concrete above. Alternatives — Prime Resins Prime Flex, Alchemy-Spetec AP Fill 700, or NexusPro from Nexus Systems — are functionally equivalent when installed by a competent tech, but TerraThane 24024 is what my crews are trained on and what we stock on the truck.
Injection ports are HMI 3/8-inch aluminum ports with rubber seals, drilled into the concrete with a Hilti or Milwaukee hammer drill and diamond core bit at approximately 4-foot centers along the settlement line. Port layout gets adjusted based on the specific slab geometry and settlement pattern — a 40-foot walk with even settlement might get 10 ports on 4-foot centers, while a 12-foot driveway approach panel with a single settled corner gets 4 ports concentrated around that corner. The metered mixing gun runs off a two-part cartridge system, and the tech monitors slab elevation with a laser level throughout the lift to control the pour rate and stop injection at the right moment.
For lift height, TerraThane 24024 can bring a Ballantyne front walk or driveway approach back to level within about 1/8 inch of the adjacent fixed reference — the entry stoop, the garage lip, or the adjacent patio. Anything more precise than that requires a subsequent shave-and-grind pass on the concrete surface, which we do when the finish tolerance matters. For general foot-traffic walks and driveways, 1/8 inch is well within the tolerance range that eliminates trip hazards and restores proper drainage flow. Port patch grout is a color-matched concrete repair grout — Sika Sikacem or Sakrete Fast-Setting Concrete Mix tinted with iron oxide pigment to match the aged gray of 20-year-old Ballantyne concrete. The tint match is by eye based on a small test batch, and it improves over the first 30 days as the grout weathers into the surrounding surface.
Yes — Ballantyne is a regular concrete lifting route. Free on-site inspection anywhere in Ballantyne, fixed written quote before we touch anything.
Ballantyne concrete lifting is 90 percent exterior flatwork — front walks, driveway approaches, pool decks, back patios — on 1990s and 2000s master-planned homes where the underlying fill under the flatwork was never properly compacted, and where lot drainage has undermined the sub-base over 20-plus years. Interior slab lifting is rare here because Ballantyne is nearly all crawlspace construction, unlike Steele Creek or Riverbend where you get slab-on-grade or partial-slab designs.
28277, 28270. All Mecklenburg County addresses covered.
It is permanent if the cause of the settlement has been addressed. If the walk settled because the original 1994 builder fill was never properly compacted and it finally consolidated under 20 years of foot traffic, poly lift with HMI TerraThane 24024 is a permanent fix — the foam fills the voids that the consolidated fill left behind, and there is nothing else moving. If the walk settled because a downspout has been discharging water at the walk edge and washing fill out from under it, poly lift will bring the walk back to level, but I need you to extend that downspout 6 to 10 feet away from the walk or the slab will settle again in another few years. If the walk settled because a plumbing supply line is leaking under it, we need to fix the leak first — poly lift on top of an ongoing water problem is a Band-Aid, not a repair. On the inspection I check for all three causes and quote accordingly.
Not for the lift itself. Providence Country Club's ARC cares about visible exterior changes — new construction, siding replacement, paint colors on primary elevations, landscape features on golf-facing yards. Concrete lifting is invisible work — the injection ports are 3/8-inch holes that get patched with color-matched grout, and by the time the grout cures nobody can tell the work was done. What can trigger the ARC is if we have to do any drainage correction to prevent re-settlement, like installing a French drain along the pool deck edge or extending a downspout across a golf-facing yard. Those exterior modifications need submission. The lift itself does not. Piper Glen and Ballantyne Country Club HOAs work the same way — invisible repair, no submission required.
Two different technologies, and poly lift wins on every metric that matters for a Ballantyne exterior slab. Traditional mudjacking pumps a slurry of cement, soil, and water under the slab through 1-1/2-inch to 2-inch injection holes — the slurry is heavy, so it can add load to a sub-base that is already marginal, and the injection holes are large enough that the patched holes are visible for years. Poly lift uses 3/8-inch injection ports and a lightweight polyurethane foam that cures in 15 to 20 minutes to a load-bearing structural material — it adds essentially no weight to the sub-base, the ports patch invisibly, and the slab is usable in 30 minutes. On a Piper Glen or Providence Country Club home where aesthetics matter, poly lift is the clear answer. Mudjacking is still a valid technology for certain applications — large industrial slabs, some agricultural work — but for residential exterior flatwork in this ZIP, TerraThane 24024 through 3/8-inch ports is the right tool.
Depends on why it settled and how much of the slab is affected. Ballantyne Corporate Park townhomes along Johnston Rd and Ballantyne Commons Pkwy are mostly slab-on-grade or slab-over-shallow-crawl construction, and a settled garage floor is almost always the result of a plumbing leak under the slab that washed out the fill. Poly lift will bring the slab back to level, but the plumbing leak has to be fixed first — either by opening the slab in one spot to repair the line, or by rerouting the line above the slab if the leak is minor and access is impractical. If the settlement is confined to a small area (a corner or one panel) and the plumbing is confirmed sound, poly lift is straightforward. If the settlement is progressive across the whole garage, we need to figure out what is causing it before we lift, because lifting an actively-settling slab is just delaying the next lift by a couple of years.
Free on-site Ballantyne inspection. Fixed written quote. Call (980) 227-1769 or book below.