Garage floor concrete in Glendora CA - a floor that holds up under your car

Most calls I get start with a crack that has grown, a corner that has dropped or a floor that has gone dusty, and the homeowner wants to know if the whole thing has to go. The price mostly moves with the size of the garage, whether the old floor has to be broken out and hauled away, how much digging and packing the ground needs, and how easy it is to bring a crew and equipment to the garage. The schedule turns on which fix the floor needs and on the curing wait after a new pour, and I'll give you your own figure in a written estimate that lists what's included.

I start by looking at the floor and telling you honestly whether it needs a crack repair, a resurface or a new slab, because a new top layer won't help concrete that's still moving and I'd rather say so up front. For a new slab, our crew breaks out the old concrete and hauls it off, then digs out and packs the subgrade, which is the soil and gravel the slab sits on, and checks that the finished floor will fall toward the door so water runs out instead of toward the back wall. We set rebar, the steel inside the slab that holds it together, pour early in the day so the heat doesn't leave a weak, dusty top, and cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a planned place to crack, before it has a chance to crack on its own. Then the slab cures, which is the slow hardening that gives concrete its strength, and we ask you to keep off it until it's ready. If the budget is tight, I'll always suggest spending it on the base rather than the finish, because nobody sees the base once the pour is done, yet a nice surface over loose dirt cracks just the same.

Garage work often ties into other jobs around the house. If you'd like color, a pattern or a smoother look on the floor or the apron outside it, our decorative concrete work covers that, and when the garage backs up to a slope that pushes soil toward the slab, concrete retaining walls can hold that ground back.

Please ask who will actually do the concrete. In California, a concrete contractor is the trade licensed to form, pour, place and finish flat concrete like a garage floor. If you hire a general builder for the concrete alone, the state licensing board lets them take that job directly only if they hold the concrete license themselves or bring in a properly licensed concrete contractor, so it's fair to ask which one applies to your job.

Thickness is the other thing to check. Around Los Angeles, garage slabs are poured toward the thicker end of the usual range for home floors, since they carry cars, so a quote here should call for more than a room floor would. We see the same worn and cracked garage floors on jobs in Azusa and San Dimas, and we plan the slab the same way there.