Garage floor concrete in San Gabriel CA - a level floor with the real problem fixed

Most calls start the same way. The floor's cracked, a corner has dropped, the top is chipping or water pools by the door, and you want to know if it's worth fixing or time to start over. The price turns on the size of the garage, whether we resurface or tear out, how much old concrete has to be hauled off and whether you want a coating on top later, and if only one section has failed, concrete cutting can sometimes take out just that piece. The schedule turns on the weather, the curing wait and any permit the city asks for. I'll give you your own figure once I've seen the floor.

First I look at the floor and tell you honestly whether it just needs a new surface or has trouble underneath that a top layer won't fix, because coating over a sinking slab is money spent twice. If it's a resurface, we clean the slab, fill the cracks and bond the new layer to the old concrete. If it's a new floor, we break out the old slab and haul it away, check where the water runs so the floor drains toward the door and not the back wall, then form, pour and finish it. We cut control joints, shallow saw lines that give the slab a planned place to crack, then cure it, which means keeping water in the concrete long enough for it to harden right, and we leave the garage swept out. If you want a coating later, we plan the pour and the wait around it so the floor's ready when the coating goes on.

Some garages need more than the floor. If you'd rather have color, a pattern or a polished look than plain gray, our decorative concrete work can go into the same job. A garage cut into a slope often has dirt pushing toward the driveway or the side yard, and concrete retaining walls hold it back so it stops washing onto the slab.

Whether your garage floor needs a permit is the city's call, and I won't tell you it doesn't until the city says so, so the place to ask is San Gabriel City Hall, where permits are applied for. Either you as the owner or a licensed contractor can get the permit, and before work starts we settle with you who handles it and what the city needs from us. If a contractor with employees takes it out, the city wants proof of workers' compensation insurance when it issues the permit. The city also makes its own structural changes to the building code because of the earthquake faults nearby, which is one more reason to check with City Hall instead of guessing.

San Gabriel gets long dry, hot stretches, and heat pulls water out of fresh concrete fast, which can leave a weak, dusty top. Industry guidance is to place and finish outside the hottest part of the day when possible, so we set pour day for the cooler hours, then to start curing as soon as finishing is done and keep it going at least 3 days, with the slab under wet burlap and plastic, coated with a curing compound or kept wet. We're based in San Gabriel and plan for the same hot afternoons on garage jobs in Alhambra, Temple City and the other cities around it across the San Gabriel Valley.