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 SouthPark shows up in a couple of specific places, and none of them are the crawl itself — this housing stock is brick pier with dirt floors under the 1960s ranches, and block perimeter with dirt or gravel under the 1990s teardown-rebuilds. What we lift in this neighborhood is driveway aprons, front walks, patios, garage slabs on the newer infill houses, and the occasional pool deck on the Foxcroft and Quail Hollow properties that back the golf course. Last month I lifted a driveway apron off Fairview Rd where the section between the sidewalk and the garage had settled 2-1/4 inches over 30 years — original 1968 concrete pour, red clay subgrade that had shrunk and expanded through 60 Charlotte summers, downspout dumping directly onto the apron seam for probably 20 years before the owner replaced the gutters. We drilled a 12-by-18-inch grid of 5/8-inch injection ports, injected HMI TerraThane 24-024 two-part expanding polyurethane, watched the elevation come back with a rotary laser and a receiver clamped to the slab edge, and stopped injection at level. Two men, four hours, one visit. Owner drove her car back over the apron the next morning.
The reason concrete lifting shows up in SouthPark and Beverly Woods specifically is the age of the flatwork. Original 1960s driveways in this neighborhood were poured on graded red clay with no proper base preparation — no compacted stone base, no vapor retarder, just concrete on graded dirt. Sixty years of Charlotte freeze-thaw cycling combined with clay soil that expands and contracts with moisture content has left most of the original driveways with visible settlement at joints and voids under some sections you can feel when you drive over them. The Foxcroft and Barclay Downs custom-builder houses from the same era have the same issue on the front walks and patios — even the higher-end custom builds in that period did not prepare the flatwork subgrade any better than the tract builders. The 1990s teardown-rebuild houses off Colony Rd, Sharon Rd, and the Foxcroft infill are 20 years newer but they are hitting the same settlement issues now because they were built on the same clay with better-but-still-imperfect subgrade prep.
The other place we lift concrete in SouthPark is interior slabs on the small percentage of houses with slab-on-grade or partial-slab construction — usually a converted garage that was slabbed over in a renovation, or a rear addition on a 1960s ranch that got poured slab in the 1990s. Interior lifts are trickier because the finish flooring above has to come up, the slab has to be lifted from below the substrate, and the finish flooring has to go back down. We do those and we sequence them carefully.
Every SouthPark lift starts with a diagnostic walk of the flatwork and a conversation about what the homeowner is actually trying to solve. Sometimes the answer is not lifting — sometimes the slab has cracked so badly and the base has voided so extensively that replacement is the honest answer, and I will tell you that on the free on-site. But on the majority of the 1960s Beverly Woods driveways, Foxcroft front walks, and Barclay Downs patios I look at, polyurethane foam lifting is the right call. The slab is sound structurally, it has settled uniformly at joints and along one edge, and the void underneath can be filled and re-leveled without disturbing the concrete itself.
The measurement phase matters more than most homeowners realize. We shoot the flatwork with a self-leveling rotary laser to map elevation at 4-foot centers across the surface, mark the lift targets in chalk, and photograph the baseline before we start. On a driveway apron that has settled 2-1/4 inches at the garage face, we are lifting 100 to 200 SF of concrete back to a target elevation that has to match the garage slab on one edge and the sidewalk or street on the other — get it wrong and you have created new tripping hazards or drainage problems. Charlotte building code does not permit or inspect polyurethane lifting itself, but Mecklenburg does require permits for any concrete replacement, and getting the lift wrong is what forces the conversation to shift from lift to replace.
The port grid is drilled based on slab thickness and load. Original 1960s SouthPark driveways were poured at 4 inches — thin by modern standards but consistent with the era. We drill 5/8-inch ports on a 12-by-18-inch grid for a standard driveway, tighter grid at the settlement edge and looser toward the sound edge. The drill is a rotary hammer, ports cored cleanly through the slab to the base below. Foam injection uses a two-part expanding polyurethane — HMI TerraThane 24-024 is our standard for driveway and apron work, TerraThane 17-004 for patios and walks where a lower-density foam is appropriate. Both cure to full compressive strength within 15 minutes.
HOA and neighborhood considerations on SouthPark lifts are usually light. Foxcroft, Beverly Woods, and Barclay Downs do not have covenant-enforced architectural review committees that regulate flatwork appearance — you can lift and re-caulk joints without notification. Quail Hollow Country Club has more oversight on golf-course-facing lots, and any patio lift visible from the course we coordinate through the club's architectural committee if the work extends beyond simple restoration. Ports get patched with color-matched concrete plug — Sika ConcreteFix or Quikrete Fast-Setting Concrete Mix tinted to match the aged concrete color. Joints get re-caulked with self-leveling polyurethane sealant. Curing is same-day for pedestrian traffic, next-day for vehicle traffic.
Foam spec on a SouthPark driveway or apron lift is HMI TerraThane 24-024 — a 2.5-pound-per-cubic-foot expanding polyurethane rated for 7,200 PSF compressive strength after full cure. That is well above residential driveway loading and matches the design load of the original 1960s slab. For front walks, patios, and pool decks around the Foxcroft and Quail Hollow country club properties, we drop to TerraThane 17-004 at 1.75 pounds per cubic foot and 3,600 PSF compressive strength — plenty for pedestrian and light-load applications, less material cost, still permanent. Both are closed-cell hydrophobic polyurethane, which matters in Charlotte because red clay expansion cycling would eventually crush open-cell foam or absorb water into it. Closed-cell hydrophobic does not.
Port drilling uses a Hilti TE 30 rotary hammer with a 5/8-inch masonry bit. Ports are drilled through the full slab depth and into the void or subgrade below — typically 4 to 5 inches on original 1960s SouthPark flatwork. Injection uses an HMI or Prime Resources injection gun with heated hose to keep foam viscosity consistent through the injection cycle. Elevation monitoring is a Bosch GRL 400H rotary laser paired with an LR 40 receiver clamped to the slab edge, calibrated at the sound-edge reference point before each lift. We stop injection when the receiver reads target elevation — the foam continues expanding for 30 to 45 seconds after injection stops, so we account for that with a small deliberate undershoot and let the reaction complete.
Port patching is done with Sika ConcreteFix or Quikrete Fast-Setting Concrete Mix tinted with iron oxide pigment to match the aged gray of 60-year-old concrete. A fresh patch on an aged slab will always be visible for the first 6 to 12 months while the patch weathers to match, and we tell the homeowner that upfront. Joint caulking is Sikaflex Self-Leveling Sealant in gray for driveway control joints and expansion joints, or Sonolastic NP1 for smaller-format walkway joints where a non-sag sealant is preferred. On the older Beverly Woods driveways where the original joints have failed and the concrete has cracked at unplanned locations, we saw-cut and re-caulk to establish clean control joints as part of the lift scope — that is a separate line item and we quote it explicitly.
Yes — SouthPark is a regular concrete lifting route. Free on-site inspection anywhere in SouthPark, fixed written quote before we touch anything.
SouthPark concrete lifting is driveway apron, front walk, and patio work on 60-year-old original 1960s pours in Beverly Woods, Foxcroft, and Barclay Downs — flatwork poured on red clay with no proper stone base that has settled 1 to 3 inches across the 60-year life of the neighborhood.
28210, 28211, 28226. All Mecklenburg County addresses covered.
Almost always a lift job on that scope. A 2-inch settlement on a 60-year-old original driveway is standard for the SouthPark and Beverly Woods housing stock, and if the concrete itself is sound — no major cracks running full slab width, no crumbling edges, no exposed rebar — we can lift it back to target elevation in a single visit with HMI TerraThane 24-024 for a fraction of the cost of replacement. Replace becomes the honest answer when the slab has cracked into multiple pieces, when the surface has spalled to expose aggregate over large areas, or when the settlement is so uneven that lifting will just crack it. I tell you which category your driveway falls into on the free on-site.
Neither Foxcroft nor Barclay Downs has a covenant-enforced architectural review committee that regulates flatwork appearance — both are voluntary neighborhood associations that focus on newsletter-level community stuff rather than construction oversight. You can lift and re-caulk without notification. The patches from the 5/8-inch injection ports are visible for the first 6 to 12 months as the color-matched plug weathers to match the aged concrete, and after that they blend in. If your specific lot has covenants that require notification for exterior work we handle it, but I have not run into a Foxcroft or Barclay Downs objection on a driveway lift.
Yes — polyurethane lifting is minimally invasive from the exterior. The port drilling and foam injection happens on the patio surface itself, no excavation, no equipment on the surrounding lawn. On a Quail Hollow country-club-facing patio we usually coordinate a courtesy notification with the club's architectural committee if the lift is visible from the course during the work, but that is a notification and not an approval hurdle. The finished work is invisible from the course — same patio, level, joints re-caulked.
Yes, with more sequencing. Interior slab lifts require the finish flooring above to come up so we can drill injection ports through the slab from above, or in some cases we can drill through the exterior foundation wall and inject horizontally under the slab, though that is a slower and less controlled method. The finish flooring goes back down after the lift and after we verify elevation. Total project time is longer than an exterior driveway lift because of the flooring removal and reinstallation, and we typically coordinate with a flooring contractor on the reinstall. Foxcroft and Beverly Woods rear-addition slabs from the 1990s tile-and-slab renovations are the typical scope on this work.
Free on-site SouthPark inspection. Fixed written quote. Call (980) 227-1769 or book below.