A garage floor sinks quietly, then all at once.

Sinking Garage Floors: diagnosed and explained.

A garage floor has a harder job than it looks. It carries vehicles that park on the same two strips for years, it meets the foundation at the walls, and it sits over soil that water reaches more often than you would think, from roof runoff at the garage corners, from irrigation along the outside wall, and sometimes from a slow plumbing leak below. When that soil erodes or settles, the slab loses support and starts to tell you. Cracks appear along the wheel paths where the load is highest. A low spot develops and water from the car or the rinse bucket collects there. A gap opens where the slab meets the wall or the stem wall, showing the floor has dropped away from the structure. And in the clearest sign of a void, sections of the floor sound hollow underfoot, a drum note where there used to be a dull thud. In California, Arizona, and Nevada the drivers are the usual suspects: washout from water moving under the slab, fill that was never compacted for vehicle loads, and clay swelling and shrinking with the seasons. One extra question matters in a garage: whether the slab is moving alone or with the foundation, and a measured evaluation answers it.

For the repair side of this, the concrete leveling solutions page lists every method Dalinghaus installs, including the ones that fix problems other than sinking garage floors.