Concrete Driveway Building in Redding CA - a driveway built on a solid, even base

Most calls start with a driveway that's cracked across, sinking at one end or holding water, or a dirt or gravel strip you're tired of tracking in. The price moves with the size, whether old concrete has to be broken out and hauled off, how much dirt comes out and how much base goes back in, the steel, the finish and whether the driveway meets a road. The schedule turns on the prep, any permit for the road end, the weather on pour day and the cure, which is the wait while the concrete gains strength before you drive on it. I'll give you a written estimate that shows what's included, and if a smaller fix will do, I'll tell you that instead.

I walk the driveway first and check where the water runs, because a slab that falls toward the house sends rainwater at your foundation. Then we break out the old concrete or strip the dirt, dig down to firm ground and pack the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, so it's even from the garage to the street and not just hard in a few spots. We set the forms to slope water away, lay the rebar, the steel that holds cracks tight, and plan the control joints, the cuts that give the slab a straight line to crack along, all before the truck shows up so the cracks that do come stay where we expect them. On pour day we dampen the base so it doesn't pull water out of the fresh concrete, place and finish the slab, give it a broom finish so it has grip when it's wet, cut the joints on time and clean up.

Since the crew and forms are already on site, plenty of people add a concrete patio on the same job. If you want the driveway to look like stone or brick, stamped concrete presses a pattern into the surface while it's still wet. Here's where I'll push back a little. When the budget gets tight, the base is the first thing people want to trim because nobody sees it on day one, and I'd cut the fancy finish before I'd cut the prep, because a nice top on a poor base won't last.

The Shasta County Department of Public Works issues encroachment permits for work in the public right-of-way, on county land or inside a county easement, and that can include the end of a driveway where it meets a county road. The county says simple permits may go through the same day and complex ones can take a few weeks, so we check that piece early instead of finding out the week of the pour. Work on the private side of the lot goes through the county's Building Division instead. Some addresses around here answer to the city and others to the county, so that's the first thing we check, and then we work through it with that office as part of the job.

We're based in Redding and work across the area, and we run into the same question on jobs in Anderson and Happy Valley, where plenty of driveways tie into a road someone else maintains. On those jobs the road end gets sorted out before we set a pour date.