Pull up yer pants, I can see yer crack!

Remember this?

The sinking cement. 

Where it was going, I don't know.  Down.

My mom was having new cement sidewalks poured in the backyard of her house, so she sent the guy up to our sinkhole to assess and fix ours.

Okay, it's not really a sinkhole.  It's called settling.  And it happens a LOT in new subdivisions.  The contractors just want the house up and looking good.  They don't care that the ground hasn't settled.  After all, they won't live here.  It was just our bad luck that they didn't attach the sidewalk to the steps with appropriate rebar and cement it all in one big piece.  Maybe that's not the normal way to do it? I don't know.  Anyways.

The cement guy gave us a deal on fixing it since he would already be getting concrete delivered to our area anyways.  He busted out the existing rectangle pad, raised up the piece that was left and re-filled under it.  He also was able to drill into the footings of the step and connect the soon-to-be new piece of walkway to it, in the hopes that if the land dropped again it wouldn't create that big gap again and may possibly just crack at the relief point (like they are supposed to)

In progress:

And the finished sidewalk!

No more crack!

Next spring, we will just put some more dirt around the sides and let the grass grow up through, and you won't be able to see the 'fix'.

Before                                                       After

P.S.   assess looks a lot like asses.  Just saying.