Concrete steps construction in Orinda CA - a steady, even climb to your door

Most folks call us when the old steps have started to tip, crack or pull away from the house, or when a remodel leaves a door with no good way down. What moves the price is how many steps you need, poured or precast, whether they tie into a landing or the house, and whether old concrete has to be broken out and hauled off. The schedule turns mostly on permits and on curing, the stretch where fresh concrete sits and gains strength before anyone should use it, and I'll tell you up front if your job looks like it needs a permit. Your estimate puts all of that in writing, so you can see exactly what's included.

I start by figuring out what's going to hold the steps up, because steps can sit on the ground, tie into a landing or the house foundation, or span open like a stair, and each one needs different footings and steel. Then we break out the old steps, dig down past the loose stuff and pack a firm base, since steps poured over loose fill settle right along with it. Before we build a single form, we lay out the whole climb from the door to the ground so the top and bottom steps come out even with the rest, because a small miss on each step adds up fast. We set rebar, the steel bars that keep the concrete tied together if it cracks, then form, pour and finish each tread, the flat part you step on, with a broom finish dragged across the way you walk so it grips when it's wet. We give the treads a slight fall too, so rain runs off instead of sitting there. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather you skip a fancy surface than skimp on the base, because nobody sees the base on pour day but you'll feel it every year after. Like we used to say on the farm, a feed pad's only as good as the dirt you packed under it.

Steps rarely stand on their own. When they're part of an addition or a new back door, the landing often gets planned alongside slab foundation building, and where steps tie into the house we may add footings through foundation installation so the steps and the house stay put together.

Orinda adds its own reviews on top of the county building permit, and each one lines up with a stage of the job. Work that needs a building permit also goes through the city Planning Department for review unless it's on the city's list of exempt projects, so I build that review into the timeline. If digging for footings goes more than five feet below the natural ground, or fill under a landing rises more than three feet above where the ground started, the city wants a separate grading permit, and I check for that during the walk-through. Breaking out old steps usually means a debris box, and Orinda Public Works requires an encroachment permit for work in or right up against the public strip along the street, including a dumpster on your property or at the roadside, so we sort that out before the box shows up.

We're based in Orinda and pour steps in cities all around it on both sides of the hills. A lot of what we see is older front steps that have slowly settled away from the house, and we run into the same tired steps on jobs in Lafayette and Moraga. If your city isn't on our list, give us a call anyway.