Concrete slab sloped toward the house
When a new concrete slab slopes toward your home instead of away from it, water runs directly against the foundation rather than draining safely into the yard. Fixing major leveling errors usually requires breaking and replacing the incorrect section or applying a specialized leveling overlay, depending on the severity of the slope.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from October 2026.
- This comes up 17.1× more often in r/HomeMaintenance than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Rip out the tiles, score the concrete bed underneath, and screed a new layerDid this help you?
- 2Cut drainage into the concrete to direct water to a waste or pitDid this help you?
- 3shim up the shed to compensateDid this help you?
- 4break up the concrete and re-pour itDid this help you?
- 5build the shed level on top of the unlevel padDid this help you?
- 6Refusing to pay until the concrete is redoneDid this help you?
- 7Having the contractor or their insurance cover the cost of tearing out and re-pouringDid this help you?
- 8Trying to cover the fresh slab with a tarpDid this help you?
- 9Chipping out the broken material and filling it with a high-strength mortar.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I went outside in the middle of the rain and saw visible pitting and Portland cement getting washed off the slab into the yard.”source ↗
“How screwed is the slab? What recourse do I have with my GC and the concrete sub? Should this slab get ripped out and re-poured?”source ↗
“come to find our concrete pad is visibly not level. It is at a slight slope. I’m not sure if this is standard. I would like to know what our options are for fixing it and what we should reasonably expect from him.”source ↗
“I also put a level on it and the bubble is all the way at the edge and very much not level”source ↗
“I tried using a broom and a 4 ft plank bc I couldn’t find anything longer. Both are showing roughly 2 in. Is that a normal amount of sloping?”source ↗
“That’s what I thought but it’s pretty far from the house and it’s sloping towards the house along the natural sloping of my yard”source ↗
“Was told cold joints and finish around catch basins will be done tomorrow but this look rough to me.”source ↗
“Thats horrible, my concrete looked no where near that rough after the pouring & finishers did their thing”source ↗