Any thoughts from folks on mudjacking vs polyjacking?

6 years ago

Good Afternoon All,

New to the forum here and I'm kind of chewing on a few thoughts. A little while back we had a sinking load bearing wall. That load bearing wall separated our garage from a subbasement tv room. At the time and we believe it is still the case (someone coming out to verify) the foundation was fine, settling was happening under the load bearing wall. The wall had a series of piers placed under it and since then (about 2 years ago) no other issues. However, we do have a void(s) under the concrete floors in both the garage and tv room that we are getting quotes on over the course of the next few weeks. Some are starting to roll in and since basically we've been told the garage and tv room would be two separate projects (some discounts for doing both at once) we have some options. Mudjacking is quite a bit cheaper in some instances but it seems it likely won't last as long. The garage floor is in much better shape than the tv room. The TV room has sort of a myriad of higher and lower spots and in general will likely have to be raised back up as much as an inch in some places (less in others). The Garage floor is relatively even with only lighter cracks on it but if you look closely you can see its just starting to sag a bit in the middle but in general probably only needs to come up less than half an inch.

Getting back to the main question... in doing research and listening to the various contractors available for hire, everyone seems fairly unanimous that the polyjacking will last longer and of course puts less weight on the soil beneath it. However, how much longer seems to be very hotly contested. Ive noticed a lot of the places that do the polly seem to think the longevity is much much better some places even going as far as saying a lifetime. Mudjacking guys say that's mostly hogwash and a good mudjacking job can last a very long time as well. What throws me for an even bigger loop are the guys who do both polly and mud. Some of them offer the same warrantee on both the polly and the mud. The ones that do offer better warrantees on the polly over the mud, if you do the math, you're still not coming out ahead by paying the extra for the polly.

Im just curious if anyone else has played this game or is in the business and not competing for my money if you have any thoughts or experiences on the matter.

Thanks for your time.

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Comments (3)

Aglitter
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Hi John, I'm not familiar with the particulars of poly vs. mud, but since no one else has responded yet, I'll fill you in on my home's situation in which we have had a lot of foundation and driveway support work done. We live on the bank of a creek, and the dirt work was not well done to support the foundation of our 2-story home, so we have all manner of shifting, tiling, and cracking going on. Our driveway had sunk several inches so much that we could hardly drive the cars into the garage. We had that mudjacked back up about 4 years ago. It has sunk back some and cracked a little, but it's been good enough for just a driveway. The house has had several rounds of jacking and piers placed underneath all around. I am wondering if that might bee a better option for you, piers that go down as deep as possible, and then level out the floor topically? I am not an expert by any means, but I do know that the piers we had placed have done a good job stopping the interior shifting and sheetrock cracking. You're onto something there by looking at the warranties. Warranty terms are sometimes a company's way of telling you to "watch out," and the fact that so many are guaranteeing poly and mud for the same lengths of time is telling. After the pier work was done, our house floor still tilts a couple of inches from one side to the other, but it's not really noticeable when you're living inside.
Alex
5 years ago
Hi John, wanted to see what you decided to do. Small issue of our front (three) brick steps slightly separating from the portico and sinking a little. They are all intact with no cracks. We are addressing some drainage issues in the front that likely contributed to this. We had contacted one local group that did poly and they said they only did concrete slabs and weren’t sure who to refer us to for such a problem. Puzzling. Anyway hope things workEd out well for you and just wanted to see if there was an update for your post.
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toxcrusadr
5 years ago
We had our driveway poly-jacked when it sank 2" at the entrance to the garage. Three estimates, widely varying prices, including how much foam they expected to use and the price per lb for overage. We did not select the cheapest mainly because the one we picked (the middle of the three estimates) was the only guy who stuck a tape down the gap between garage and driveway slabs to find out how deep it was. Turned out it was over a foot!

What I should have done was drill some holes myself, farther out, and estimate the volume of this triangular prism void all the way across the driveway. I would have found who was underestimating foam usage. As it turned out, the estimate was $2000 and final cost was $3000 due to all the extra foam used. Looking back, I could have had the concrete sawed away, filled in with compacted limestone fines (or whatever) and had someone pour new concrete, probably for a lot cheaper. Bottom line, it pays to understand how the estimate is structured and what is likely to be the actual usage, and how they figured that out.