Concrete floor installation in El Monte CA - a slab built for the flooring on top

Most people who call about a floor are converting a garage, adding a room or replacing an old slab that's cracked and uneven, and the hard part is what you can't see once it's poured. If the old slab has to come out first, concrete cutting is usually where we start. The price moves with the size of the floor, how thick it is, whether it has rebar, the steel that holds the slab together, how much digging and base work the ground needs and any finish you add, and a reinforced slab costs more per square foot than one without steel. The schedule turns on the permit, any soils report the city wants and the cure before flooring goes down, and the written estimate after I walk the room spells out what's in the price and what isn't.

The first thing I ask is what's going on top, because if tile, wood or carpet goes down later, moisture coming up through the slab is what ruins it, and we plan everything under the slab around that answer. Then our crew digs out to firm ground and packs the subgrade, what the slab sits on, instead of raking loose dirt level, so the floor doesn't settle with it. We set the forms to the height of your doors and the rest of the house, lay the moisture layer and the rebar, and pour early in the day, since a pour in midday heat can leave a weak, dusty top. We finish the surface for what it's getting, cut the joints and keep the slab damp while it cures, the slow hardening that gives concrete its strength. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather you skip a fancy finish than cut the base, because the base is hidden on day one and the only fix for a bad one is tearing the floor out.

Outdoor slabs on the ground generally don't need the moisture layer an indoor floor gets, so on a concrete pool deck the effort goes into the base and where the water runs. When a new floor leaves a door higher than the yard, we also pour concrete steps so getting in and out is safe.

Here the El Monte Building Department handles plan review, permits and inspections, and the counter staff will tell you if any other department needs to be involved. The city decides whether your floor needs a permit, so we ask before we plan the pour instead of guessing, and when it does, we pull the permit and line up the inspections. The bigger question here is the ground, because most of El Monte is mapped in liquefaction zones, places where loose, wet soil can go soft in an earthquake. If your floor comes with new foundations or footings, as most additions do, the city requires a soils report from a California-registered geotechnical engineer, or a civil engineer with that experience, before it issues the permit, no matter how small the project, and the Building Official can ask for soils data on any job. When that applies, I tell you at the estimate and we help you get the report, so it doesn't hold up the work.

On jobs here we see a lot of older slabs poured on ground that was raked flat with nothing underneath, and that's usually why the flooring on top lifted. We see the same thing on jobs in Rosemead and South El Monte, and we build the new floor the same way in each.