Alchatek Blog

Even though we sell to contractors, we get a lot of calls from property owners or managers with slab issues after their internet searches lead them to our website. Part of my job consists of talking to them to determine if their situation merits forwarding to one of our contractors in their area. What follows are the most common questions I hear from property owners or managers interested in slab lifting, along with the most accurate answers. This is extremely valuable info for any polyurethane slab lifting contractor.

1. How strong is your slab lifting foam?

AP Lift Foam can support up to 14,000 lbs per sq ft. That's in a free rise foam. Underneath a slab it will be many times stronger than that.

2. Have these products been specified?

Yes. In the later 1990s various Departments of Transportation started testing high density foams underneath bridge approach slabs. These polymers have proven to hold up and are now used by just about every DOT In the United States to support highway loads.

3. How long will the installed foam last?

Polyurethanes are made from derivatives of oil and natural gas. Their lifespan is similar to that of plastics. They have high chemical resistivity and should last a hundred years.

4. What if you over lift?

The lifting is done in a very controlled manner, moving the slab millimeters at a time. A trained slab lifter is usually able to get within one eighth of an inch tolerance.

5. Can the foam lift a very thick slab or a slab with a piece of equipment on it?

Yes that is not a problem. If you run the math and apply PSI (pounds per square inch) over square feet you'll realize that it doesn't take very much pressure to lift something heavy.

6. Is the foam safe for the environment?

Our polyurethane foam does not shrink, degrade, or leach anything into the environment. We are one of only two companies that has an NSF certified (approved for contact with drinking water) structural lifting foam.

7. How is the foam used in a warehouse or industrial facility?

In industrial facilities or warehouses, polyurethane foam is used to stabilize rocking slabs, to lift sunken slabs, to fill voids beneath slabs both in and outside the building, and to fill massive voids that occur right behind loading dock walls.

Want more information on slab lifting? 

We're happy to announce that Alchemy-Spetec has been featured on SprayFoamInsider.com. This is a good match, since we get a lot of interest from spray foam professionals looking to expand their skill set into slab lifting and other forms of concrete repair. Editor Jay Davidson provides some background on the company and then embeds a nice collection of our slab lifting videos...

"Alchemy-Spetec, a merger between Alchemy Polymers and Resiplast US, is located in Tucker, Georgia. Their CEO Stephen Barton has been in the concrete repair business for over 30 years. In addition to slab lifting foam, they also offer leak seal resins, soil stabilization grouts and water stop products."

You can read more and view the slab lifting videos at this link on SprayFoamInsider.com.

Want more info on slab lifting with Alchemy-Spetec products?

A warehouse is only as good as the foundation it’s built on. And regardless of how well-constructed your warehouse may be, most foundations settle. That’s just a fact of life. Shifting soil, compaction, and many other environmental conditions tend to cause settling. Sometimes warehouse floors settle gradually, and in other cases they may just suddenly cave-in. These situations obviously create problems for property owners, and opportunities for the contractors who know how to fix them.

Alchemy-Spetec manufactures the AP Lift 430, 440 and 475 polyurethane lifting foams for slab jacking and structure lifting. Among the most dependable products for jacking and leveling concrete slabs, these two-component, high-strength, hydro-insensitive structural foams serve as an extremely effective solution for contractors.

Want more info on warehouse and industrial slab repair?

It was about 2 AM when the fire alarm when off in my hotel room.  I have never heard an alarm so loud in my life; all I wanted to do was get out of the room but it was so disorienting that I could barely throw some pants and a shirt on.  My instincts told me this was a false alarm as I trudged down 5 flights of stairs to the bottom level.  I was behind an elderly couple so it was slow going as we navigated our way out.

This particular stairwell brought us out on the side of the building and I noticed it was dimly lit.  This was a nice ocean front resort hotel and the lighting in my opinion should have been brighter.  About the time I noticed that, the elderly lady in front of me tripped and fell right on her face on the sidewalk.  She was about 5 yards in front of me and I was first to her side; she had fallen behind her family.  Fortunately a quick responding fire department rolled up right then and I ran over to get their help.  They got her up and into the paramedic truck. 

It looked like the lady was going to be okay but the point is that this was probably avoidable.  When I ran to her side I could see the sidewalk tripping hazard that had caused her to fall.  Combined with the dim lighting it was a case of dual premises liability.  I give talks to groups like IFMA and BOMA just on the topic of Tripping Hazards and Premises Liability.  The numbers are staggering when you look at the amount of incidents and the costs associated with them.  The toll is financial: lawsuits, settlements, workers comp, bad press.  And the toll is physical: injury and sometimes death.  This is the cost of not knowing that you may have tripping hazards on your property; or worse it is the case of knowing and not doing anything about it.  Those factors weigh heavily in court.

Want more information on slab lifting?

The bane of slab lifting equipment is the iso.  It turns your hands black if you get it on them and it is the main culprit that causes pressure imbalances.  For some reason, in the past few years the problem has gotten worse.  I suspect is has something to do with changes in the chemistry of the raw materials.

Contractors who use their rig on a daily basis have less of a problem.  If your rig sits for any length of time, the iso (A side material) can start to setup in the hose.   We see this most often at the end of the whip hose right next to the gun.  The solution is simple, but you have to be vigilant.  Make sure you have greased up the threads on the A side drum, change your desiccant drum cartridge when the desiccant changes color, and follow the instructions below to recirculate the A side material every 10 days that your rig sits unused.

Step 1:

In the movie "Heartbreak Ridge", Clint Eastwood says his Marines are taught to "Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome".  You gotta love the United States Marines and of course, Clint Eastwood.  So if they don't mind, we are going to borrow that phrase because that's what we had to do when we came up against a tough slab lifting job this past weekend.  

 

A site evaluation told us that this was going to be no ordinary slab lift.  In some areas there were voids over a foot deep beneath the slab!  From the outside, it was easy to see where the CMU (concrete masonry unit a.k.a. concrete block) wall was buckling outwards.   Slab lifting with polyurethane exerts lateral forces too so I was worried about pushing the wall out further (which in turn would cause a collapse of the garage slab, wall, and everything else attached). 

 

This might have been a job to walk away from, but I thought there might be a way to do it.  First we installed bracing on the exterior of the CMU block wall to offer some support against the lateral forces likely to be exerted.  Once that was completed we began injecting in a grid with AP Lift 430, starting at the lowest point and working our way out from there.  

 

 

I won't lie, this job was taking a lot of material because of the voids and the amount of lift required.  There was a lot of creaking and grinding going on as the slab was raising.  At one point we stopped and I decided to try something to give the wall more strength.  Inside the garage there was a cap block that ran along the top of the CMUs.  Drilling through the cap block, I was able to inject and fill the CMU wall cavities with the AP Lift 430, thereby tying those courses of block together with a polymer column. 

 

 

So next time you see a tough looking slab lift, ask yourself if you're going to just walk away or whether you're going to step up to the plate.  Make Clint proud!

Want more information on slab lifting?

People buy the MixMaster Pro because they want the most dependable, high production slab lifting gun on the market. Sometimes they can't wait for hands on training and we have to go ahead and ship a gun to a customer we haven't been able to train face to face. To help get you up to speed on the MixMaster Pro, we captured some footage at recent job where I'm using the MixMaster Pro and discussing best practices.

Want more informaton on the MixMaster Pro?

There are contractors that lift the everyday slabs, performing a great service fixing trip hazards, reviving previously unusable floor space, and supporting the investment of the property owner.  Then there are slab and foundation lifting contractors who take it to the next level – every opportunity is a challenge to be conquered.  The results are often fantastic – people’s entire homes lifted back into place, factories and warehouses returned to life, and countless potential hazards and injuries avoided.

But first you’ve got to understand one thing; you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight.  Expert contractors have to know what is going on at all times.  In the picture at the top of this post, you can see a slab that I probably would have not attempted to repair.  However, with several tools to help monitor the different pieces of this puzzle, this contractor was able to put it back together again.  They say information is power and I am a firm believer in that, especially when it comes to taming jacked up concrete slabs.  In the picture you can see three different slabs.  Our customer Morgan Helms of Helms Polyfoam (Jackson, MS) is using a ZipLevel, a machinist’s dial indicator, and a putty knife to monitor what each of the slabs is doing.

The MixMaster gun is injecting underneath the slab that he wants to raise. 

So what are these different monitoring tools doing?  Let’s take a look….

1. The dial indicator tells him which slab is moving. In the picture, the base of the dial indicator is on the slab that Morgan is injecting under while the dial point is on the slab he doesn’t want to move. It doesn’t really matter how you configure it as long as you understand what the needle movement means.   A needle on a machinist dial indicator moves in .001” increments.  If the needle on this dial indicator is rising, that would mean the wrong slab is lifting and he knows to stop.  If the needle is falling then the slab he is injecting under is lifting, and that’s what he wants.
   
   
2. So what if both slabs are moving equally? In that case the dial indicator would remain stable or fluctuate slightly in both directions.  This is where a ZipLevel or a laser transit would come in handy.  Morgan has his ZipLevel indicator box (in yellow) on the slab he doesn’t want to move.  It will let him know if the slab he doesn’t want to move is lifting so he can stop and re-evaluate what to do next.
   
   
3. One of my favorite tools is the metal putty knife. Slabs often move in increments so small that you can’t detect them visually.  If you wedge a putty knife into a crack between two slabs, you will see it wiggle when there’s slight movement.  So the putty knife in the picture is on the third section of slab and letting Morgan Helms know what is going on with that piece.

You can use other things like string lines, tape measures, and laser transits as well.  The point is that real time information is likely to give you a better finished result, and it will also help you avoid making mistakes.

Want more information on slab lifting ?

Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to assist on a concrete leveling job involving a sunken garage slab.  This particular slab had a massive void underneath that needed to be filled before the slab would lift.  In just a few hours, we had the void filled and the slab level again.

Quick recap for those who are new to polyurethane slab lifting: Concrete slabs settle due to voids or unstable soil below. By pumping a polyurethane foam through the concrete, you essentially push the concrete slab back up from below. Using polyurethane foam is very cost effective, environmentally friendly, and causes very little downtime.

Check out this incredible time lapse footage our marketing team captured!

Want more information on concrete leveling with polyurethane foam?

I recently assisted on a job in which a large void underneath a homeowner’s garage had caused the slab to sink. Our marketing team got some GREAT time lapse footage of the slab lift.

Quick recap for those who are new to polyurethane slab lifting: Concrete slabs settle due to voids or unstable soil below. By pumping a polyurethane foam through the concrete, you essentially push the concrete slab back up from below. Using polyurethane foam is very cost effective, environmentally friendly, and causes very little downtime.

Check out this awesome time lapse footage!