Slab Leveling Cost: Mudjacking vs Polyjacking
Estimate what it costs to raise a sunken slab from its area and your quoted price per square foot — whether the crew is mudjacking with a cement slurry or polyjacking with polyurethane foam.
Calculator
Leveling 200 sq ft of slab at $8.00/sq ft is about $1,600.00. Enter the $/sq ft for your method — polyurethane (polyjacking) usually costs more per sq ft than mudjacking but is lighter and faster.
When a concrete slab sinks — a settled garage floor, a driveway panel that has dropped at a joint, a patio pitched back toward the house — you rarely need to tear it out and pour again. Two lifting methods raise it back into place by injecting material through small holes and floating the slab up on the pressure. Mudjacking (also called slabjacking or mudpumping) pumps a cement-and-soil slurry underneath; polyjacking injects an expanding polyurethane foam. Both are commonly priced by the square foot of slab lifted, and that is exactly what this calculator models: your area times the per-square-foot rate you were quoted.
Because the rate comes from you, the tool prices either method equally — just enter the figure from your proposal. Use it to sanity-check a single bid, to compare a mudjacking quote against a polyjacking one on the same slab, or to rough out a budget before you call anyone. The math is closed-form and every dollar is yours, so the answer stays correct no matter where material prices go.
Formula
A leveled area times your rate — nothing hidden:
total = area × price_per_sqft
Enter the area of the sunken section that is actually being raised (length × width in feet), not the whole driveway or garage if only one panel has dropped. The rate you type in is the injection method you were quoted: polyurethane foam (polyjacking) typically costs more per square foot than a cement slurry (mudjacking) but is lighter, cures in minutes and needs smaller holes. There is no price table baked in — the tool takes your market rate and does the arithmetic.
Worked example
Say a 200 sq ft section of garage slab has settled, and a contractor quoted $8 per square foot to lift it:
- Area = 200 sq ft
- Rate = $8 / sq ft
- Total = 200 × $8 = $1,600
Swap in a polyjacking rate — say $15 per square foot — and the same slab lands near $3,000. That spread is the whole trade-off: foam costs more up front but is faster, lighter and water-resistant. Enter whichever method you were quoted and the total scales straight off the area.
Mudjacking vs polyjacking — and what really drives the bill
Mudjacking pumps a slurry of cement, sand and soil through 1–2 inch holes. It is the older, cheaper method and works well on heavy slabs, but the material is heavy (which can itself settle over very weak soil), the holes are larger, and it needs a day or two to cure. Polyjacking injects a two-part polyurethane through dime-sized holes; the foam expands to fill voids and lift the slab, cures in about 15 minutes, weighs a fraction of the slurry and shrugs off water. It costs more per square foot. Neither is a "better" choice in the abstract — the right one depends on the slab, the soil and the void beneath, so enter the rate for the method your contractor recommended.
Three things move the number beyond raw area. Void size: a slab floating over a large washed-out cavity takes far more material than one with a thin gap, and material use is the real cost driver even when the quote reads as $/sq ft. Access and holes: a slab under a finished space, or one that needs careful patching afterward, costs more. Cause: slabs sink because the ground under them moved — erosion from a downspout, poorly compacted fill, or a plumbing leak. Lifting the slab without fixing the water that undermined it just buys time, so pair the lift with grading, gutter and downspout work.
One honest limit: slab leveling raises flatwork — driveways, garage floors, patios, sidewalks and interior slabs. It is not a foundation-underpinning method. If the concrete that has moved is a load-bearing footing or a foundation wall, that is a structural problem for a licensed engineer and the piering tools, not a mudjacking job. Treat this output as a planning estimate on the rate you entered, get an itemized written quote, and confirm the crew has diagnosed why the slab sank before they lift it.