Concrete Leveling in Naperville: Mudjacking, Foam Lifting and Slab Jacking Explained
Concrete leveling raises a sunken slab by pumping grout or foam under it. On a sound slab it costs less than replacing it, and on the wrong slab it wastes the money.
Who’s writing: a Naperville flatwork contractor. We don’t lift slabs. We pour new concrete and replace slabs that have failed, so where lifting is the better answer, this page says so.
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What Is Concrete Leveling? Mudjacking and Slab Jacking Defined
Concrete leveling is the umbrella term for raising a settled slab without removing it. A crew drills holes through the concrete, pumps a material into the empty space underneath, and lets the pressure float the slab back up. The holes get patched and the slab stays where it is. Search for concrete lifting, concrete jacking or cement leveling and you’re looking at the same trade.
- Mudjacking
- The original method, and the same thing as slab jacking. A grout of soil or sand, water and cement is pumped under the slab.
- Stone slurry
- A newer take on grout, made from pulverized limestone and water, sometimes with cement added. Also called limestone leveling.
- Polyurethane foam
- Two liquids injected through small holes that expand into a rigid foam. Also called foam lifting, foam jacking or polyjacking.
None of the three touches why the slab sank. All three fill a gap and raise the concrete. If the ground or the water under it is still doing what it was doing, the slab can settle again.
Polyurethane Foam vs Mudjacking vs Stone Slurry
The choice comes down to hole size, downtime and price. Mudjacking is cheapest and leaves the biggest holes. Foam leaves the smallest and costs the most. Stone slurry usually lands between them. Replacement is in the last column so you can weigh all four. Prices are national figures from the sources named, not our prices, and the replacement column is our own installed range.
| Mudjacking | Stone slurry | Polyurethane foam | Replacement (our work) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hole size | 1.5 to 2 inchesHomeGuide, 2026 | About 1 inchA-1 Concrete Leveling, Dec 2024 | About 5/8 inchA-1 Concrete Leveling, Dec 2024 | None. The section comes out. |
| Back in use | Foot traffic right away, vehicles after 24 hoursA-1 Concrete Leveling, Dec 2024 | Foot traffic right away, vehicles after 24 hoursA-1 Concrete Leveling, Dec 2024 | From about 15 minutes to an hourHomeGuide, 2026; A-1, Dec 2024 | Walkable in 24 to 48 hours, 7 days before you park on it |
| Weight under the slab | Heavy. HomeGuide notes it adds load to the soil. | Heavy, as a dense stone fill | Very light, which Fixr notes suits unstable fill | New slab on a rebuilt stone base |
| National cost | $3 to $6 per sq ft (Angi, 2026)$4 to $9 per sq ft (HomeGuide, 2026) | Most jobs $1,100 to $1,500A-1 Concrete Leveling, March 2026, a company that sells it. No per-foot price given. | $5 to $25 per sq ft, averaging $15 (Angi, 2026)$8 to $25 per sq ft (HomeGuide, 2026) | Our installed ranges: walkways $8 to $15 per sq ft, driveways $10 to $20 |
| Deals with the cause? | No | No | No | It can. The base gets rebuilt, and the water has to be handled too. |
Be careful with lifespan claims. Bob Vila’s August 2023 guide says concrete leveling lasts 5 to 10 years and isn’t a permanent fix. Lifting companies often claim much longer: A-1 Concrete Leveling says most foam repairs can last the life of the concrete. Both can be true. A slab over settled ground that has stopped moving can stay put for a long time, and one over a live washout won’t.
Compare with replacement at 25 to 40 years for a driveway, and remember that a lift keeps the old concrete. On a slab that is already old, you’re paying to extend what’s left of its life, not to reset it.
Who’s a Candidate for Concrete Lifting?
A good candidate is a slab that dropped whole, onto ground that has stopped moving. The first step is measuring what you have. It takes a tape measure, a level and a few minutes.
- Measure the drop. Lay a straight board across the joint and measure the gap under it at the low panel. For scale, Naperville treats a one-inch height difference as a problem on public sidewalks.
- Check the pitch. Put a level on the slab with a board under it if you need the length. A patio should fall about an eighth of an inch per foot away from the house. Water should never run toward the foundation.
- Stand on the corners. A panel that rocks has an empty space under it, and that’s worth telling the lifting company.
- Mark it and date it. Pencil the height on the wall or a stake and look again next spring. If it moved, it’s still going.
Sunken walk panels
The textbook lift. A walk panel is small, and a sound one with a trip edge is usually best lifted. It costs far less than tearing it out, and that is the right call even though it costs us the job. Public squares in the parkway are different: start with the city side on our walkways and sidewalks page.
A patio pitched toward the house
Often a good candidate, and worth doing soon, because it sends rain at your foundation. A lift can restore the pitch if the slab is whole. Watch the house edge: if a downspout is doing the damage, reroute it first.
Driveway panels at the garage or apron
Fair candidates if the panel is whole and the drop is settlement. If it’s worse in January than in July, that’s frost, and lifting won’t help. Ask how the crew will handle vehicle weight, since a driveway has to carry a car over the fill. More than a third of the panels failing is the point where replacing the driveway usually wins.
A front stoop pulling away
Sometimes. A stoop that dropped whole can be raised, but many are poured on backfill, and a heavy stoop takes more to move. If it has split or tipped, our concrete steps page explains the rebuild.
Pool deck panels
Possible, with care around the coping and any buried lines, and small holes matter more on a finish you look at all summer. Patches show on exposed aggregate and stamped surfaces. Our pool deck page covers replacing a settled deck.
Garage floors follow their own rules, because the slab sits on fill inside the foundation walls. See our garage floor repair page for those.
Mudjacking Cost and Concrete Leveling Cost
$3 – $6
Angi, 2026 national figures, not our prices. HomeGuide’s 2026 guide says $4 to $9.
$5 – $25
Angi, 2026 national figures, not our prices. Average $15. HomeGuide’s 2026 guide says $8 to $25.
For a whole job, Angi’s 2026 national average is $1,242, with most homeowners paying $662 to $1,884. We don’t sell this work and have no price of our own to give, so treat those as a sanity check and get local quotes.
Why one small panel costs more per foot
Lifting companies charge minimums. HomeGuide reports minimum job fees of $300 to $700 for mudjacking, and A-1 Concrete Leveling puts leveling minimums at $300 to $2,000 depending on the company and region. A per-foot rate tells you little about a single walk panel.
Concrete leveling cost compared with replacement
Mudjacking at Angi’s national rate comes in under our $8 to $15 per square foot for walkways at every point of the range, and on a sound slab that is usually the better buy. Foam is a closer call: the top of its range, $25, is above our driveway range of $10 to $20 and our garage floor range of $8 to $14. A lift at that price on a tired slab is hard to justify.
A single replaced section is quoted on site, because the saw, the haul-off and the concrete delivery cost about the same for one panel as for three. If you’re close on price, compare the two quotes by cost per year of life, and put the drainage work in whichever one you choose.
More holes and more material mean more labor. Stone slurry usually needs more holes than the others.
A hollow under the slab takes more material than a slab that only needs raising.
The pump stays on the truck, so a backyard patio behind a fence is a question to ask up front.
Rerouting a downspout or sump line is usually a separate cost, and the lift depends on it.
Why Concrete Slabs Sink: Fix the Cause Before Leveling
Downspouts and sump lines
A downspout emptying beside a slab washes fine soil out from under it, one storm at a time. It’s the first thing to check at any sunken corner. Naperville’s guidance is to let sump water out at least 10 feet from the house. Extend the line before anyone drills.
Washed-out base
If water has carried off the material under the slab, there’s a hollow. A lift can fill it, but water that made one hollow will keep working. Limestone slurry without enough cement can wash out too, so ask what the mix is.
Backfill next to foundations
Ground beside a house was dug out for the basement and pushed back, and it can keep settling for twenty or thirty years. That’s why stoops and patios sink at the house edge. In Wheaton, where the median home dates to 1976, most of that fill is well along. In the 1990s and 2000s subdivisions around Plainfield and east Aurora, it may still be going down. About two thirds of Naperville’s homes were built in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, so most slabs here sit somewhere in between.
DuPage and Will County clay
Much of this area sits on slow-draining prairie soil like Drummer silty clay loam, the Illinois state soil, and the water table can ride within inches of the surface in a wet spring. That matters for lifting. Fixr’s January 2025 guide warns against mudjacking or foam jacking where the soil may expand. Ask any lifting company what the ground under your slab does through the seasons.
Winter heave or settlement? Lifting only helps one
Settlement goes one way: down. Heave comes and goes. An average year here brings about 134 nights at or below freezing, and wet ground under a slab freezes and pushes it up. A slab that rises in January and drops in spring isn’t a candidate. Pumping fill under it treats a problem it doesn’t have. It needs drainage and a stone base.
Does Your Sunken Slab Need Replacing? Get a Free Look
Takes about 60 seconds. Tell us what the slab is doing. We’ll get back to you within one business day to set up a free on-site visit: a written quote if a section or slab needs replacing, and a straight answer if it doesn’t.
When Concrete Leveling Won’t Work and Replacement Is Right
Lifting needs a slab in fairly sound condition. These are the cases where a lift is likely to waste your money. All of them are honest reasons to get a replacement quote too, and that is the point where we come in.
- It broke on the way down.Pieces at different heights lift separately, and the cracks stay. New cracks can also open during a lift.
- The surface is failing.Deep flaking stays with the slab. You’d be raising concrete that still needs replacing.
- It heaves every winter.Frost, not a hollow. Fill under the slab doesn’t change that.
- The ground is still moving.If it dropped again since last year, a lift can follow it back down.
- More than a third has failed.Past that point, our rule is that replacing beats patching on cost per year of life.
- The slab is near the end of its life.On a slab original to a 1970s house, the base is usually the real problem.
What we quote in those cases is replacement: saw-cut along the joints, break out the failed section, dig out and recompact what’s under it, deal with the water, and pour new concrete. New concrete won’t match the old at first, and a section poured over the same washout fails the same way. Cutting out one bad panel also doesn’t mean replacing the whole slab. The concrete repair guide covers cracks and everything short of a lift.
Concrete Leveling Near Me: How to Hire a Lifting Company
Search concrete lifting near me and you’ll find specialist lifting companies, foundation companies with a lifting crew, and general concrete outfits. Many sell only one or two methods, so each will lean toward what it owns. A-1 Concrete Leveling, for example, sells foam and stone slurry and doesn’t do mudjacking. Ask two companies with different methods, and use the same questions with both.
Questions about the job
- Why did it sink, and will it happen again?A good answer names the water or the fill, not just the product.
- Is it settlement or heave?If they don’t ask when it moves, they haven’t diagnosed it.
- What exactly goes under my slab?Grout, limestone, cement content, which foam. Get it in writing.
- How far will it come up, and might it crack?A slab can crack during a lift, so ask what happens if it does.
Questions about hole size and patching
- How many holes, how big, and where?Sizes run from about 5/8 inch to 2 inches. Have them mark the slab or sketch it.
- What are the holes patched with, and will they show?Patches rarely match. That matters most on stamped and exposed aggregate finishes.
- What happens to the joints?Ask whether cracks and joints get sealed afterward, and who does it.
Warranty questions
- What does the warranty cover?Re-settling of the same slab, a crack from the lift, or only the material? Get the answer in writing, next to the price.
- What voids it?Some terms may depend on drainage. Find out whether you have to change anything, such as a downspout.
- Are you insured, and will you call for utility locates?Drilling and pressure near buried lines is a fair thing to ask about before work starts.
Concrete Leveling FAQ
What is mudjacking?
Mudjacking, also called slab jacking, raises a sunken concrete slab by drilling holes through it and pumping a cement grout mix underneath. The pressure fills the empty space and floats the slab back up. The holes are then patched. It works on a slab that sank in one piece and is otherwise sound.
How much does mudjacking cost?
Angi’s 2026 national figures put mudjacking at $3 to $6 per square foot, and HomeGuide’s 2026 guide says $4 to $9. HomeGuide also reports minimum job fees of $300 to $700, so one small panel can cost more per foot than those rates suggest. These are national averages, not our prices. We don’t do this work.
Is polyurethane foam better than mudjacking?
Not automatically. Foam uses smaller holes, weighs far less and is ready sooner, and mudjacking costs less. Foam’s national range tops out at $25 per square foot, which is above our installed driveway range. On a plain concrete slab with an easy void, the cheaper grout may do the job. Foam earns its price where holes will show or the slab can’t be closed for a day.
How long does concrete leveling last?
Bob Vila’s August 2023 guide says 5 to 10 years, and it is not a permanent answer to sinking concrete. Lifting companies often claim longer, and A-1 Concrete Leveling says most foam repairs can last the life of the concrete. What decides it is whether the water and soil that caused the sinking were dealt with.
Can a cracked slab be leveled?
Only if it is still working as one piece. A slab split into pieces at different heights is a poor candidate, because each piece lifts on its own and the cracks stay. A slab can also crack during a lift. That section is usually a replacement job.
Do you do concrete leveling or mudjacking?
No. We don’t lift slabs. That is a job for a slab-lifting company, and if yours is a good candidate we’ll say so. What we quote is replacing a slab or section when lifting is the wrong answer.
Can a sunken public sidewalk square be lifted?
Ask the city before you hire anyone. The public sidewalk in front of your house is yours to maintain, and Naperville’s cost-share program is built around replacing qualifying squares. How it works is on our walkways and sidewalks page.
Other Concrete Services
Slab past saving? Get a replacement quote.
Call or fill out the form. If it needs replacing, you get a written number. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that instead.