Concrete driveway building in Moses Lake WA - a slab built for frost and deicer

Most people call because the old driveway has cracked, sunk in spots or started holding water, or because a new house needs one. The price moves with the size of the slab, how much old concrete has to come out, how much digging and packing the ground needs, and whether the work reaches the curb and street. The schedule turns on the weather, any permit, and the days the new slab needs to cure, which is the wait while it hardens before it can take weight. If the old slab is tied into a garage floor or walk you want to keep, concrete cutting lets us take out just what has to go. Before I price anything, I check with the city or county office that covers your property about permits, and the written estimate I send after walking the job gives you your own figure.

First we mark out the driveway and take out what's there, then dig down past the loose dirt to the subgrade, which is the ground the slab actually sits on. We pack it and check it for soft spots until it's firm and even all the way across, because a slab only holds up as well as what's under it. We set the forms so the slab falls away from the house and garage, and place rebar, the steel bars that keep cracks tight, where the job calls for it. I go over the mix with you before pour day, since a driveway here has to handle freeze and thaw and winter deicer. We pour early so the midday heat can't dry the top too fast and leave it weak and dusty, then give it a broom finish, a light texture that gives tires and boots some grip in rain and ice. Control joints, the grooves that tell the slab where to crack, get cut on time so any cracks land there and not across the middle. When the budget gets tight, people want to cut the base and keep the nice finish, and I'll talk you the other way, because a good-looking top on soft ground cracks just the same and the base can't be fixed later without tearing it all out.

A driveway is one kind of flatwork, our word for slabs that sit flat on the ground, and the rest is easy to plan alongside it. A seating area or walkway out back fits with concrete patio construction, and if you'd like the driveway or its borders to look like brick or stone, stamped concrete services give it that pattern.

Where your driveway meets the street, the city has a say. The approach, sidewalk and curb sit in city right-of-way, and work there needs the city's Street and Utility Construction Permit and has to meet the city's construction standards. That permit covers the street side and doesn't settle whether the slab on your own lot needs one, so I check with the city before I price your job. When a permit is needed, we handle the application or help you with yours, and we build to what the city decides.

Frost is the other thing every driveway here has to handle. The city gives its frost depth as a minimum of 18 inches, which tells you freeze and thaw will work on a slab all winter, and most of us put deicer on top of that. Older national pavement guidance says properly air-entrained concrete, mixed with tiny air bubbles that give freezing water room to go, has excellent resistance to the surface scaling, or flaking, that freeze, thaw and deicers cause, so it's fair to ask any contractor whether their mix will be air-entrained. We're based in Moses Lake and see the same winters on driveways in Ephrata and Othello, as well as Quincy and other cities around the area.