Slab foundation building in San Gabriel CA - a base built for the soil on your lot

Most people who call about a slab are building something new, like a house, an addition or a back unit, and they want to know what they're in for before they commit. The price moves with the size of the footprint, what your soil calls for, how much digging and grading the lot needs and how easy it is to get concrete to the pour. The schedule mostly turns on whether you need a soils report and how long the city takes with your plans. If your house already sits on a slab that's sinking, that's a different job, foundation raising. Your own number comes from the estimate, after I've seen the lot.

I start with your address and whether it falls on the city's liquefaction map, because a lot on that map can mean a soils report comes first and shapes everything after it. If your ground shrinks and swells as it wets and dries, we'll talk about a post-tensioned slab, which has steel cables run through it that get pulled tight after the pour, and the trade group behind them presents that type as a cost-efficient, high-performance choice for homes on that kind of soil. From there our crew digs down to firm subgrade, the ground the slab actually sits on, and packs the base instead of raking it level, because loose fill settles with the dirt under it. We check where the water runs so the ground falls away from the slab, set the forms and the rebar, which is the steel that ties the concrete together, and pour early in the day so midday heat doesn't leave a weak, dusty top. Then we let it cure, the wait while the concrete hardens enough to carry a load. The base is the part you never see after day one and the first thing people want to cut from the budget. I won't, because a nice finish on a bad base is a job you end up paying for twice.

Not every building sits on a slab. If your plans call for a perimeter foundation with a raised floor, that's foundation installation, and I'll tell you which one fits once the soil has been looked at. Landlords and property managers putting up a new building often need the parking poured too, and concrete parking lot building gets the same dug-out, packed base.

In San Gabriel, you fill out a permit application at City Hall for the type of project you're planning, and the city's planning approval usually has to come first. Because of the faults close by, the city made its own structural changes to the building code, and in mapped seismic hazard zones a city can ask for more than state law does, so your slab has to meet San Gabriel's rules and not just the state's. Before work starts, we settle with you who will handle the permit and what the city needs from us.

Most slab work here goes in on tight lots behind older houses, with the neighbors a few feet away and one narrow way in for the concrete, so we plan where the truck goes and leave the site clean. We see the same tight access on jobs in Alhambra and Temple City.