The patio slopes toward the house
Stand at the far edge and look at the joint with the wall. Water should run away from the house, not toward it.
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Services / Patio leveling
Patios draining back toward the house, porch slabs pulling away from the wall, and steps separating from the landing.
A patio is poured against the house, on ground that was disturbed when the house was built. When that backfill settles, the patio tips toward the foundation, and every rain and every sprinkler cycle now drains against your wall instead of away from it.
Porches and steps have a second problem. They are structurally tied to the house at one end and sitting on fill at the other, so when the fill drops, the slab separates. You see it as a gap opening at the wall, a step that no longer meets the landing, or a porch post that has stopped carrying its load.
These are worth catching early, because water running down the gap accelerates the settlement that opened it.
Any of these means the ground under the slab has moved.
Stand at the far edge and look at the joint with the wall. Water should run away from the house, not toward it.
A visible separation between the slab and the wall, sometimes wide enough to lose a tape measure in.
The bottom step has dropped, so the rise between steps is uneven and the transition to the walk is off.
The slab has dropped away from the beam it was supporting, leaving a gap at the top of the post.
Low spots holding water after rain, which then works underneath.
Where a patio meets a paver walk, washed out base shows up first at the transition.
Patios, porches and steps are usually the same job. The settlement that dropped the patio dropped the step next to it, because the same fill is under both. Quoting them separately would mean two visits for one problem.
The work does differ from a driveway. These slabs are often thinner, they are usually attached or adjacent to the structure, and the finish is more visible, so hole placement matters more. We plan where the holes land before drilling anything.
Steps in particular need care. A step slab that has separated has to come up evenly or you trade one uneven rise for another, and the transition at both the top and the bottom has to be right when we are finished.
All of these are our own jobs.
Before: a measured gap beneath a settled patio slab at the siding.
After: patio back tight to the foundation and draining correctly.
A level backyard patio beside the wooden steps.
Before: a porch post separated from the beam as the slab dropped.
After: the porch slab back at height.
Before: a step slab settled away from the walkway.
After: front steps and walk restored to an even rise.
A patio returned to its original height along the back of a house.
A backyard patio in Loveland.
My patio is pulling away from the house. Is that serious?
It is worth dealing with. The gap itself is not structural, but it channels water straight down alongside your foundation, which is what caused the settlement in the first place. Left alone it tends to accelerate.
Can you lift a porch that has a roof on it?
Often yes, and that is exactly when it matters, because a dropped porch slab stops supporting its posts. We look at how the porch is built before quoting it, since a covered porch has load paths a bare slab does not.
Will you match the step heights exactly?
That is the goal and it is the part we take the most time on. An inconsistent rise between steps is a trip hazard in its own right, so we bring the slab up to match rather than just to close the gap.
What about pavers rather than poured concrete?
We fill the void under paver walks and patios and the pavers get reset on the restored base. There are photos of exactly that job on our projects page.
Can you fix the drainage while you are here?
We correct the slope of the slab, which is often the whole fix. If the problem is your yard grade or a downspout, that is a different trade and we will tell you plainly rather than take the job and hope.
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