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 is a small but real part of what I do in Davidson, and the calls concentrate almost entirely on the modern-Davidson side of town — Davidson Village on the south end, River Run out toward the lake, and the scattered 2000s custom infill. The pre-1900 core does not have much poured concrete to lift. Those houses have brick sidewalks, occasional slate steps, and driveways that are mostly gravel or Belgian block laid on sand — no concrete slab-on-grade to sink, no poured driveway to void out under. The concrete lifting phone rings on the newer stock: a 1998 Davidson Village driveway that has dropped an inch and a half at the joint where it meets the front walk, a River Run garage slab that has tilted toward the drain because the fill below it settled ten years after the house was built, a sidewalk on Robert Walker Dr that has heaved at a tree root and become a trip hazard the HOA sent a nastygram about.
Two weeks ago I did a lift on a 2001 Davidson Village driveway — twenty-six feet long, ten feet of drop on the street-side edge where the slab had voided out from what looked like a leaky underground sprinkler line the owner had never repaired. HMI TerraThane 24024 polyurethane injection, six ports across the affected panel, brought it back to grade in under an hour with the homeowner standing in the driveway watching. The old mudjacking approach would have taken three hours and left visible dime-sized holes across the panel. Poly injection uses 3/8-inch injection ports and leaves marks you can barely find with a flashlight the next week. On a tight walkable-lot alley-served Davidson Village driveway where the neighbors are five feet away and the front elevation matters for the new-urbanist streetscape, that clean finish matters.
The pre-1900 core work I do do on the concrete side is different — occasional 1930s or 1950s poured concrete steps or a back-patio slab that was added to a historic house decades after original construction. Those get treated as historic-adjacent features and any exterior modification visible from the street goes through Davidson Historic District Commission review the same way a dehumidifier condensate line does. Poly injection is usually approved because it does not visibly change the concrete — same slab, same finish, just brought back to grade. What HDC will not approve is a mudjacking pass on a visible historic-adjacent slab because the drilled holes and slurry patches look like modern intervention on what is supposed to read as a period feature. On any Davidson job — Concord Rd historic, Main St commercial-adjacent, Griffith St residential, or Davidson Village modern — free on-site inspection, fixed written quote, no surprises.
On a Davidson Village or River Run job, the process is straightforward and runs in one visit. Inspection first — I walk the affected slab with a laser level, measure the drop at every panel joint, look at the underlying story (settled fill, leaking supply line, tree-root void, downspout washout), and quantify how much material we are going to inject. Poly injection ports go in every 3 to 4 feet across the affected panel, drilled with a 3/8-inch masonry bit through the top surface. HMI TerraThane 24024 is the standard polyurethane foam I spec — 2 to 4 pound density expansion, cures in 15 minutes, does not add meaningful load to the underlying soil the way slurry mudjacking does. Injection happens under low pressure with continuous laser monitoring — you inject, wait for the foam to expand and lift, monitor the panel with the laser, stop when you hit target grade. On a 26-foot driveway panel with 10 feet of drop, the whole lift runs 45 minutes to an hour of active injection time.
On a River Run garage slab that has tilted toward a drain, the same injection process runs from inside the garage — I drill through the slab surface, inject beneath, monitor, stop. The homeowner is driving on the slab the same day. No cure-down-time drama the way mudjacking has. On a Davidson Village front walk that has heaved at a tree root, the fix is often not injection at all — a heaved slab is being pushed up by root growth and injecting foam beneath it does nothing about the root. That is a saw-cut and replacement job, or in some cases a root-pruning pass by an arborist followed by grinding the heave down. I will tell you that on the inspection rather than sell you a poly job that will not fix the problem.
Historic-core Davidson work triggers HDC review if the slab is visible from the street. A 1950s back-patio addition on a Concord Rd historic house is usually not visible from Main St or Concord Rd because it is behind the house — no review, straightforward poly injection. A visible historic-adjacent slab — say, a 1930s poured-concrete front walk on a Griffith St historic house — goes through HDC submission before any work happens. I submit the scope, the injection port pattern, and photos showing the pre-lift condition. Poly injection is usually approved because it does not visibly change the slab. Mudjacking on a visible historic-adjacent slab is a fight and I do not recommend attempting it. Poly is the right answer inside the overlay.
Material spec on Davidson jobs: HMI TerraThane 24024 polyurethane foam for standard driveway and walkway lifts on Davidson Village, River Run, and St. Alban's Square jobs — 2 to 4 pound density, closed-cell, hydrophobic (does not degrade in wet soil the way soil-slurry mudjacking material does), 15-minute cure. Injection ports are 3/8-inch masonry drill holes patched with color-matched concrete filler after the lift — nearly invisible on a broom-finished driveway, visible but not obtrusive on a smooth-finished walkway. On a garage slab lift I use the same 24024 material with slower expansion to give the laser-monitored lift time to catch. On a River Run house with a lakeside patio slab that has settled, I sometimes spec HMI TerraThane 24014 for the lighter expansion — the patio load is minimal and you do not need aggressive foam density under a slab that is not seeing vehicle traffic.
Historic-core Davidson work runs the same TerraThane 24024 material on any interior or non-visible exterior slab — same injection pattern, same port size, same finish patch. On any historic-adjacent slab visible from the street inside the Davidson HDC overlay, I document the pre-lift condition photographically for the HDC submission, use color-matched concrete filler patched to match the historic surface color and texture, and photograph the post-lift condition for the HDC file. Slurry mudjacking is off the table for historic-core visible work — the drill hole size (typically 1-1/2 to 2 inches) and the slurry patch color make it read as modern intervention on a period slab. I have turned down historic-core lift jobs where the homeowner insisted on mudjacking because the finish would have looked wrong on the elevation and HDC would have declined the submission.
Yes — Davidson is a regular concrete lifting route. Free on-site inspection anywhere in Davidson, fixed written quote before we touch anything.
Davidson concrete lifting is almost entirely a modern-Davidson Village and River Run problem — 1990s and 2000s driveway and garage-slab settlement — because the pre-1900 historic core has minimal poured concrete to sink, and the rare historic-adjacent slab work triggers Davidson Historic District Commission review for exterior visible modifications.
28036. All Mecklenburg County addresses covered.
Almost always poly injection. A slab that has dropped due to fill settlement, sprinkler-line leak washout, or tree-root void beneath the panel is a lifting job — the concrete itself is fine, the ground under it moved. HMI TerraThane 24024 polyurethane injection through 3/8-inch ports brings the slab back to grade in under an hour on a typical 26-foot Davidson Village driveway panel. The homeowner drives on it the same day. Replacement is only warranted when the slab itself has failed structurally — visible cracks that span the panel, heaving from tree-root growth that will continue, or spalling that has taken out significant surface area. On a clean-drop settlement job in Davidson Village or River Run, poly is the right answer and it is a fraction of the cost and disruption of tearing out and pouring a new panel.
Depends on whether the patio is visible from the street. If it is behind the house and not visible from Concord Rd or any primary elevation, no HDC review is triggered — straightforward poly injection job with TerraThane 24024, done in a couple of hours, invisible finish. If it is a side patio visible from the street or a front-walk element that reads as part of the historic elevation, HDC review is required and I submit as part of scope. Poly injection is usually approved because it does not visibly change the slab — same concrete, same finish, just back to grade. What HDC will decline is mudjacking on a visible historic-adjacent slab because the 1-1/2 to 2 inch drill holes and slurry patches look wrong. I always default to poly on historic-district jobs to keep the submission simple.
Usually one of three reasons and I can tell you which on the inspection. First: fill settlement — Davidson Village lots were graded and filled in the mid-1990s and some of the fill was under-compacted, so 25 years of freeze-thaw cycles and rainwater percolation have finally caused a void to open under the slab. Second: leaking underground sprinkler line or supply-line washout — a slow leak under the driveway has eroded the sub-base gradually and finally reached the point where the slab has lost bearing. Third: tree-root void — a root that grew under the slab and later died or was cut has left a void the ground has settled into. On the inspection I look for evidence of each — moisture staining on the slab underside if we can see it, soil probe test through the injection ports, review of the property's landscape history. Whatever the cause, the lift itself is the same job. Fixing the underlying source (repair the sprinkler line, extend the downspout, remove the dead root) is a separate task and I will tell you which one applies.
Yes. Poly injection on a garage slab runs from inside the garage — I drill 3/8-inch ports through the slab surface, inject HMI TerraThane 24024 beneath, monitor with a laser level, stop at target grade. The whole lift on a two-car garage slab with a modest tilt is a two-to-three hour job. Homeowner drives on the slab the same day. No cure-down-time. The port holes get patched with color-matched concrete filler that is nearly invisible on a broom-finished garage floor. If the tilt is significant — more than an inch across the garage — the injection takes longer and we work in stages to control the lift precisely, but even a substantial tilt is usually a same-day job start to finish. River Run garage slab settlement is common at the 20-plus-year mark and I have done a handful in the neighborhood over the years.
Free on-site Davidson inspection. Fixed written quote. Call (980) 227-1769 or book below.