Stamped concrete services in Moses Lake WA - color you picked before the pour

Most people who call me have a cracked or sinking slab they're done patching, or a plain gray concrete patio they'd like to look like more than a parking spot. The price moves with the size, the pattern, the color method and whether we're tearing out an old slab first. The schedule mostly turns on the weather, and on whether the work reaches the sidewalk or driveway approach, where the city has a say. You'll get your own number in the written estimate after I walk the job.

Color comes first on stamped work. Before anything else I explain the two ways to get it, color mixed all the way through the concrete or color worked into the top, and you pick the one that suits you. Then we dig out and pack the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, because the concrete industry's guide calls for that ground to be packed even and dense and to be damp, with no standing water, when the concrete goes in. Nobody sees the base once the slab is down, so it's the first thing people want to cut from the budget. I'd rather spend the money there than on a fancier pattern, because a pretty slab on a soft base cracks just like a plain one. Once the base is ready, we pour, press the pattern while the surface is still workable and cut control joints. Those are planned grooves that give the slab a straight place to crack instead of wherever it likes. At the end we talk about sealing.

A lot of stamped jobs connect to other concrete. A stamped patio usually needs a path to the door, and our concrete sidewalk building work can match it or get a plain broom finish, the light dragged texture that gives your shoes some grip. If you're redoing the driveway, look at the slab inside the garage too, since cracked or sunken garage floor concrete is easier to replace while our crew is already there.

In the backyard it's your property, but out front the city gets a say. Moses Lake requires its Street and Utility Construction Permit before any work in the public right-of-way. That covers streets, sidewalks, curb, gutter and driveway approaches, the strip where your driveway meets the street. The city also requires work on curb, gutter or streets to be done by a licensed and bonded contractor. Whether a stamped patio behind the house needs a permit is a question for the office that covers your address. Before I price the job, I check with the city or county office for your property. When a permit is needed, we handle the application or help you with yours, and we work to what that office decides.

Winter is the other thing. The city's design standards list a frost depth of at least 18 inches for Moses Lake, which tells you how deep the ground can freeze here, so we plan every outdoor slab for freeze and thaw and for the ice melt that ends up on it. We see the same winters on jobs in Ephrata and Othello, and from our base in Moses Lake we also work in Quincy and other cities around the area.