Dumont, CO Mudjacking: Lifting Sunken Concrete Along the I-70 Corridor

Clear Creek County's mining history means a fair amount of the ground in and around Dumont isn't native soil at all. It's fill, sometimes decades old, placed to create flat building space in a canyon that doesn't naturally offer much. Fill settles differently than undisturbed ground, and it tends to keep settling in small increments for years after a slab is poured on top of it, especially where drainage from the steep hillsides above concentrates water into a narrow area. Add in the elevation, and Dumont sees a long freeze-thaw season, often starting earlier in fall and running later into spring than it does down in Denver. Water that gets into the joints or under the edge of a slab freezes and expands repeatedly through the winter, which widens existing gaps and accelerates the erosion of whatever fine material is holding the slab up from underneath.

For a Dumont property, we start by evaluating how the slab is settling, evenly across the whole pour or concentrated at one edge closest to the hillside drainage. If it's a clean settlement pattern on a slab that's still structurally sound, mudjacking is usually the right call. We drill small ports through the concrete, pump a cement-based slurry underneath under pressure, and let the slurry fill the void and raise the slab back to grade before patching the ports flush with the surrounding surface. If the fill beneath a Dumont slab hasn't finished settling, meaning the ground itself is still actively moving, we'll say so rather than lift a slab that's likely to need lifting again in another year or two. In those cases we'll talk through stabilizing the drainage first, or, if the slab has cracked into pieces, whether partial replacement makes more sense. Most lifts that do go forward are finished in one visit, with the slab ready for use the same day.

The point where a Dumont driveway meets the road or a narrow access lane is often the first place settling shows up, since that transition point carries concentrated runoff from the grade above. A dropped apron isn't just cosmetic, it changes how a vehicle's undercarriage clears the transition and can crack the slab further with repeated impact every time someone pulls in or out. Lifting the apron back level with the road surface restores a smooth transition and closes the gap where water was pooling and working its way under the slab. Because apron pours tend to be smaller sections, these lifts are usually quick, single-visit jobs.

A lot of flatwork in Dumont sits just below or just above an old retaining wall or a cut fill slope, and those structures interact with how a slab settles over time. If the fill behind a retaining wall is settling, the slab tied into that fill will often settle right along with it, sometimes unevenly, tilting toward the low corner. Our estimator looks at the retaining structure and the surrounding grade as part of every mudjacking evaluation here, not just the slab in isolation, because understanding what's happening below and around the concrete tells us whether a lift will hold.

Concrete Doctor has served Clear Creek County properties from our Lakewood base since 1994, and the canyon terrain around Dumont is territory we know well from repeated visits over the years. If a driveway apron or walkway has started dropping at the edge, call (303) 988-2558 or request a free on-site estimate before the gap widens through another winter.