The True Cost of Concrete Leveling: Insights from Check A Pro Radio

Join Jim Klauck, aka Check A Pro Joe, on the Check A Pro Radio Show as he sits down with Zachary Zaras from Level Concrete to discuss the ins and outs of concrete leveling. Discover the safety benefits, time requirements, and most importantly, the costs involved in leveling your concrete surfaces.

Learn how pricing is determined by square footage and lift needed, and why catching issues early can save you money. Zachary explains how the cost of leveling compares to complete replacement, with most jobs averaging around $1,500. Explore the importance of a comprehensive concrete health check and the value of bundling services for additional savings.

Zachary also shares the extensive service area covered by Level Concrete in the greater Houston area, from Galveston Island to Lake Conroe, and discusses future plans for localized crews to better serve the community. Tune in to understand the full scope of concrete leveling and why it's a crucial investment for your property's safety and longevity.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Jim Klauck aka Check A pro Joe here
on the checker pro radio show with Zachary Zaras from level concrete hello zachary
hello how are you doing i am living the dream thank you so much for asking whenever
i have you on the program we talk about the benefits of leveling your concrete concrete,

(00:24):
the safety reasons for doing it,
how long it takes to do it.
Something we haven't talked about before is what does it cost to do it?
Because we want it done. We want it done now.
How do you price this out?

(00:45):
Yeah, so that's the million-dollar question, figuratively speaking.
So we look at lifting and leveling the concrete.
We price it by the square foot. So it does vary by how much lift is needed.
Now, I can't say the average customer gets about one inch of average lift.
Now, if you're waiting until the concrete's four, five, six inches down,

(01:07):
the price point gets significantly higher.
But if you catch it early enough, if it starts settling, it's an inch or two,
if it's about an inch average, most people are about a little under $5 a square foot.
So we typically like to tell people half the cost of replacement.
In the current marketplace that we see replacements anywhere from $10 to $14

(01:28):
a square foot, you know, with minimums that $3,500 to $4,000 range.
So that can kind of tell you, you know, that's where concrete replacement is.
We're typically start out half of that or lower.
Now, there are ancillary services when we start talking about joints and cracks
and just the maintenance items you need that can make the total build a little

(01:49):
bit higher than half the price of replacement.
But leveling itself, if you just want, hey, I want it lined up,
I don't want anybody tripping, look to spend less than half the price of replacement
or less than $5 a square foot, generally speaking.
Most of the leveling jobs are probably in the range of about $1,500.

(02:09):
So I can leave it at that. But it's hard to say without looking at your driveway
specifically to know exactly where you're going to be. But we have the free estimates.
You call us out there and we'll come out and give you a full proposal.
I tell people, we'll do a health check of your concrete. It's like going to
the doctor. You want to know you're 100% healthy.
If you call us out for the walkway, we want to look at all your concrete.

(02:30):
We're the professionals, the experts out there, it doesn't cost us anything
to walk around and say, Hey, everything looks great.
You know, or, Hey, I, by the way, I noticed there's some things going on here
that you can do to protect, protect yourself in the future. You know? So we offer that.
And that makes a lot of sense because when people know they have a problem with
one of the slabs on their driveway, for instance, let's say they've got four

(02:54):
big pieces, six big pieces.
One is cracked and pitched up a bit or sinking.
They know they have a problem. So when you come out, you're going to look at that.
But at the same time, let's walk around the house. Let's walk around the front
walk, the back walk, the pool deck.

(03:15):
Because while level concrete is out there, you're going to want them to remedy
everything because they're there, okay?
So it's not going to really cost much more to add a little more to the pool
deck maybe because they're already there fixing the bigger problem in the driveway, right?
Yes, absolutely. It's a lot easier to add one small area on now than it is to

(03:37):
call me back in six months and say, hey, I want to do this one area in the future.
So sometimes it's better to bundle it all together. um, bundled for savings.
Yeah, no, that just makes a whole lot of sense. You guys have been doing this
for some time in the greater Houston area.
Uh, what's your radius? How far out do you go?

(03:58):
That's a loaded question. Um, but we generally like to say about 50 miles from
our office. Currently the office is two 90 in the beltway.
Um, but any major suburb, we will go down on the Galveston Island.
So if you're down on the Island, you have a driveway down there or a bulkhead,
a seawall, uh, we can get down there and take care of those and
we go all the way up to the north side of lake conroe so if you want

(04:18):
to you know north to south if you want to go east to west we go
out from sealy brookshire area all the way out to mont bellevue you know we
will cover pretty much the entire greater houston area it's a large area to
cover um and we you know we go out there all the time we tend to bundle things
together with other jobs in the area to make it worthwhile worthwhile.

(04:39):
But we're out there. We're everywhere.
That's a huge service area. A lot of service providers won't go that far for what they do. Yep.
A lot stay local. We go kind of everywhere.
And we are working on strategic plans to try to decentralize everything and
put crews and people in each location.

(04:59):
So if you live in the Friendswood area, if you're coming soon,
you'd probably have a crew and design specialists who are reps to come out there
and take a look at everything. thing, they're going to live and work in your area.
So it'll be your neighbors that are living and working for you.
So that's the end result we're aiming for here soon to allow that territory
to even get larger than it is today.

(05:23):
One thing I'm going to throw it at you, how much does all the concrete weigh in your service area?
Can you imagine what that number would be? That'd be a fun number to try to calculate.
Someone has a rough idea, but I can't imagine, right? I mean,
think about it. I'm just thinking about the concrete. It's everywhere, right?

(05:43):
I can sit back and I can tell you right now, demographics, we have about 1.2
million single-family owner-occupied homes in the region we're in.
Um the average home has about 750 square
feet and 75 square feet weighs
4 000 pounds so 4 000 times 10 you have 40 000 pounds per house times 1.2 million

(06:04):
you can do some math and that's just residential that's nothing to do with your
streets your your parking lots your commercial and that's just driveway that's
just driveways yeah yeah that's
not sidewalks walkways that's It's not foundation. That's not bull decks.
It's just amazing, the concrete. It's amazing the earth hasn't just collapsed. Collapsed it, yeah.

(06:27):
Zachary, as always, I enjoy our time together here on the program.
Thank you so much for joining me today. No problem. Thank you. Thanks for having me.