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

Most people call when the cracks start to spread, a corner drops, or one side of a crack sits higher than the other and catches the mower wheel. The price mostly turns on which of those two jobs your floor needs, how big the garage is, how much old concrete has to come out and how much work the ground underneath needs before we pour. The schedule turns on the same choice, plus the weather, the curing wait on a new slab and whether the city wants a permit first. I walk the job with you, explain what I see and put it all in writing, so you know your own number before anything gets broken up.

First I figure out whether your floor is just worn or actually failing, because that one call decides everything else. I look at the cracks, any sinking and any raised edges, then tell you plainly which way I'd go. On a resurface, we clean and prep the old slab so the new layer has something solid to grab, then bond the overlay on. On a replacement, we break out the old slab and haul it off, dig out the subgrade, the dirt and gravel the slab sits on, and pack it hard so the new floor doesn't settle with the dirt. We check where the water runs so the floor sheds it toward the door instead of the back wall, and we set rebar, the steel inside that keeps cracks from pulling apart. After finishing, we cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a planned place to crack, then let it cure, which is the wait while it gains strength. It's a lot like prep on a restaurant line, where the work before service decides the night, because once the truck shows up there's no starting over. If the budget gets tight, I'll trim the finish before I trim the base, because nobody sees the base on day one but it's what decides whether the slab stays flat.

Garage work often touches the concrete around it. If you want color or a pattern on the apron, or a floor that looks finished instead of plain gray, our decorative concrete work picks up where the slab leaves off. When a garage sits below a slope and dirt or runoff keeps pushing toward it, concrete retaining walls hold the bank back so the new floor isn't fighting it.

The City of Lincoln requires a building permit whenever a structure is built, altered, repaired or torn down, and its list of work that doesn't need one names concrete walkways and patios but not garage floors. That makes a garage slab something to ask about, not something to assume, so before we start we check with the city or county office that covers your address. When a permit's needed, we take care of the paperwork and inspections with you. If the job needs a plan check, the city says that review can take 2 to 6 weeks depending on size and complexity, so we build it into your schedule.

Placer County notes that some soils here shrink and swell and can damage foundations over time, mostly in the low-lying western part of the county from Rocklin to the county line. That kind of movement can be one reason a garage floor sinks or heaves, and it's why those signs push me toward replacement and a packed base rather than a new top layer. We look for the same signs on garage jobs in Rocklin and Roseville, and across the other cities around Lincoln.