Concrete Lifting and Leveling Photo Album: PolyLevel™ Around a Pool
Homeowner Jim D. was experiencing concrete settling around his in-ground pool. The concrete slabs that surrounded the pool had begun to settle and sink around the pool, causing them to pull away from the edge of the pool and creating unsightly and unsafe cracks around the lip of the pool.
When constructing the pool, the dirt around the area had to be removed. It was replaced after the pool was installed in a process called backfilling. Backfilled soil is often loosely compacted, meaning that over time it will settle as it gets compacted by the weight of the concrete above it. This causes the concrete to sink with the settling soil, which is what made these cracks appear.
To fix this problem, the concrete was leveled with a highly durable material called PolyLevel™. PolyLevel™ is foam that gets injected beneath the sinking concrete through tiny holes drilled through the surface. Enough foam is injected to raise the concrete back to its original, level position. Then the foam hardens into a dense and solid pour that is strong enough to permanently raise and support the concrete and any weight on top of the concrete. Because PolyLevel™ is so lightweight, it won't add to the compression of the soil beneath it, making it the perfect solution to deal with settling concrete.
Once PolyLevel™ is injected, Jim D. will only have to wait a few moments for it to solidify before he can use his pool deck again. Thanks to its strong and lightweight material, PolyLevel™ will be the permanent solution to the settling concrete around this pool.
A Dangerous Lip
The concrete around the pool that sank lower created a lip around the edge of the pool. This lip is not only ugly, but dangerous to people walking around the pool.
Gaps and Cracks
The concrete around this pool settled in a sloped manner away from the pool. This caused the concrete to peel away from the lip of the pool and can also lead to cracks in the slabs themselves.
Concrete Dipping In the Middle
The concrete in the middle of this slab has settled below the level of the rest of the concrete. This is because the soil beneath the middle of the slab has compressed more than the soil beneath the slab next to it. This difference in settling caused this block to sink lower and less evenly than the rest of the concrete.
Uneven Settling
While settling usually occurs beneath most concrete constuctions, it usually settles evenly. In this case the soil beneath the concrete did not settle evenly, causing the concrete slabs to be uneven and angled rather than straight and level.
Cracking and Sinking
Soil beneath the concrete gets compressed by the weight above it and this causes the concrete to lose support. When this happens, gaps often appear between the slabs of concrete and cracks can appear in the slabs themselves as parts of the slab lose support faster than others.
Bringing to Level
Leveling the concrete around this pool will require PolyLevel™, a rigid foam that can support the weight of the concrete above it without adding to the weight on the soil below it.
