Concrete contractor in Concord, CA - driveways and patios that drain right

A lot of the houses we see in Concord sit on flat lots with their original driveway, patio and garage slab, and plenty of those slabs have dropped at a corner, cracked across the middle or started pooling water by the garage door. The trouble is usually underneath, because the subgrade, the dirt and gravel the slab sits on, was raked level instead of dug out and packed, so it settled and took the concrete down with it. We dig that out and compact a new base before any forms go up. That base is the part nobody sees on pour day and the first thing a tight budget wants to trim, and I'd rather you save on a fancy finish than on the base, because a pretty top on a soft bottom cracks just the same. On the farm we learned early that a feed pad is only as good as the ground you packed under it.

The ground matters too. Plenty of yards we dig in on this side of the hills have heavy clay that swells and shrinks as its moisture changes, and on the lots that climb toward the hills, water coming off the slope has to go somewhere. We check where it runs before we set a form, and we slope the slab away from the house.

Permits for Concord homes go through the city's Permit Center, and I check with them on your job before I put a date on your pour, because a permit adds its own wait before we can dig. The city's list for single-family and duplex homes is a partial one that names work like roofs and water heaters, not driveways or patios, so don't read it as saying your slab is exempt. The Permit Center's page also lets you look up zoning, see which permits a project needs and estimate the fees, which is worth doing before you ask for bids. When your job needs a permit, we pull it as your contractor and handle the paperwork and inspection calls for our part of the work. Two licenses are worth checking on anyone you hire here, a state contractor license and a Concord business license, which the city requires even of contractors whose office is outside the city, the way ours is in Orinda. We're licensed and fully insured, and our work is backed by our satisfaction guarantee.

What moves the price here is mostly what's under and around the job: how much old concrete has to be broken out and hauled off, how much soft base has to come out, how much the slab has to be sloped or stepped to move water, how thick it needs to be for what it carries, and whether you want a plain broom finish, the light texture that gives shoes and tires some grip, or something decorative. The schedule turns on the permit if there is one, the utility marking before we dig, and curing, the days the new concrete needs to gain strength before it carries weight. Your written estimate spells out what's included, like whether hauling the old concrete away is part of it. Concord's an easy run over the hill from us, and we do the same work in Lafayette and down in Hayward.

Concord is one of the bigger cities on our side of the hills, with a busy downtown, shopping along the main roads and neighborhood after neighborhood of family homes, from older ranch houses to newer subdivisions. It sits just past Walnut Creek, and we get calls from every corner of it, from a cracked garage floor in a house that's had a few owners to a new patio behind a newer place.

Older houses here usually need tear-out and a rebuilt base before anything else, newer ones usually mean adding on and matching what's there, and on the lots that climb toward the hills the job leans toward walls and steps.