Concrete
Concrete
Slabs, sidewalks and driveways. Every property and every soil condition is different, so we walk the site and price it against what's actually there rather than quoting a number before we've seen the ground.
Chapter 01
Subgrade Prep And The Crack Pattern
Most concrete failures we get called out to fix trace back to what happened, or didn't happen, before the pour. Loose or uncompacted soil under a slab settles unevenly once it's carrying weight, and that uneven settling is what shows up months later as a diagonal crack running corner to corner instead of a clean, controlled line.
We compact the subgrade and bring in a crushed stone base course before any concrete goes down. On the heavier clay soils common around here, that base course also gives the slab somewhere to drain instead of sitting on soil that swells and shrinks with every wet and dry cycle.
Residential job site with the Upper Hand yard sign and a work canopy set up in the driveway
Slab, Sidewalk And Driveway Thickness And Reinforcement
A patio slab or sidewalk carrying foot traffic runs four inches thick with welded wire mesh or fiber reinforcement, and that's plenty for the load it'll ever see. A driveway carrying vehicle weight, especially anywhere a truck or trailer will sit, gets poured thicker with rebar on a grid, not just mesh, because tire loads concentrate stress in a way foot traffic never does.
We size the reinforcement to the actual use of the slab rather than defaulting to one spec for everything on the job. Guessing thin on a driveway is how you end up with alligator cracking under the tire path within a couple of years.
Chapter 03
Control Joints And Cure Time
Concrete is going to crack somewhere, that's just how the material behaves as it cures and the slab moves. Control joints give it a place to do that on purpose, cut or tooled at set intervals so any cracking happens along a straight, hidden line instead of wherever the slab happens to be weakest.
We cut joints within the first day while the concrete is still workable, and we hold traffic off the new pour, foot traffic for several days and vehicles longer, so it reaches real strength before it's carrying load. Finish options run from a standard broom finish for grip on walkways and drives to exposed aggregate or a stamped pattern where you want the slab to carry some of the look of the place, not just the load.
Upper Hand. Full service residential and commercial general contractor. Call (832) 632-1160.