Concrete built for Clair-Mel City

Driveways on the old block homes

Most of Clair-Mel City is single story block, built low and wide on flat lots, with a carport or a slab out back and a straight run of driveway to the street. Concrete like that has usually been down a long time. It was poured thin, on whatever sand was already there, and it has been carrying trucks and heat and rain ever since. The cracks you see now are not the problem. They are the report on what is underneath.

Sand moves down here. Rain runs along the edge of a slab, pulls the fine material out from under it, and leaves a hollow nobody can see from the top. The concrete bridges that hollow until something heavy sits on it, and then a panel drops and the whole apron starts to rock. Patching the crack does nothing, because the crack was never the failure. If the base is gone we take the panel out, rebuild the base, compact it, and pour back onto something solid.

So the first thing we do is walk it with you and work out which panels are still sitting on good ground and which ones are floating. Sometimes half a driveway is fine and the apron at the street is the part that has to go. Sometimes it is all tired and you are better off replacing the run in one pour so it cures as one piece with joints where we want them, not where the slab decides. Either way you hear which one it is, and why, before a breaker touches the driveway.

• Old slab broken out and hauled off the lot
• Base dug out and compacted before anything is formed
• Fall set away from the house and the carport
• Control joints cut so the cracks land where we put them
• Site swept down before we pull off the job

Where the water goes after a storm

Clair-Mel City sits low and flat, with the Palm River running out toward McKay Bay just north of it, and in the wet season the afternoon storms come in hard and leave in twenty minutes. The ground here does not take it all at once. Water sheets across a yard, finds the lowest edge of whatever concrete is in its way, and sits against it. A slab that was poured level, with no thought given to where the water was meant to go, becomes a dam in the middle of a lot.

On a block house that matters more than it sounds. Water standing against the base of a wall works its way in, and you see it inside as a dark line low on the paint or a floor that never quite dries out after a storm. Most of the patios and pads we get called to replace were pitched the wrong way, or pitched nowhere at all, and the house had been taking the runoff for years. Concrete is the cheapest drainage you will ever own if the fall is right.

So we shoot the grade before anything gets formed, and we set the fall away from the house toward where the water already wants to run. Sometimes that means a step down at a doorway. Sometimes it means leaving a shallow swale in the grass beside the pour and running the slab a little thicker at that edge. One customer put it better than we can: "Jose responded all my questions and took the time to find a solution to resolve some terrain problems, then water can flow without any problems."

Tearing out concrete that has already failed

A lot of the work we do around here starts with a breaker rather than a mixer. Old sidewalk panels lifted by oak roots until the edge stands proud enough to catch a toe, driveways patched twice already and still moving under load. Taking the old concrete out is the honest part of the job, and it is where a fair piece of the cost sits, because the slab has to come up and get hauled off before anything new goes down.

The other half is new ground. A carport getting closed in needs a footing under the new wall, and that footing has to reach bearing soil instead of resting on the same sand the old slab sits on. Additions out the back of these houses run into the same thing. We dig it, tie the steel, and pour it with the slab where the plan calls for that. It is the part nobody sees again once it is covered, and it is the part that decides whether the wall above it cracks.

Concrete gets looked at by other people after we leave. An inspector, or the neighbor who poured his own pad and wants to see how yours came out. A slab cannot be dressed up after the fact, so the work has to be right while it is still wet. B Vargas left this one on our Google listing: "José and his company did an impeccable job. I recommend them without hesitation. I even had an inspection a few weeks after the work was completed, and the inspector confirmed that the work was done with excellent quality concrete and proper drainage."

Getting a price in Clair-Mel City

Call the shop at (813) 812-1892 or send the form on this page, and we will come out and look at the job. The estimate is free and it comes to you in writing, with the work broken down so you can see what you are paying for and what we are leaving alone. We are on the tools six days a week and we start early, so mornings are usually the easiest time to catch us. Clair-Mel City is close enough to the yard that coming out to look at a driveway costs us nothing.