Concrete footings in Redding CA - a firm base under whatever you're building

Most people call once they have plans drawn for an addition or an outbuilding, or after learning the footings have to go in before anything else can. The price mostly turns on how long the run is, how deep the footing goes and what the ground is like, so a flat, dry lot costs less than a sloped one with hard soil. The schedule depends less on the digging than on what surrounds it, which is any permit review, the inspection of the open trenches and the weather. Your estimate is written out so you can see what's included, and if your house needs more than footings, like a full foundation installation, I'll say so there.

I start by looking at how your lot drains and which way it slopes before anyone picks up a shovel, because water and slope decide more about a footing than the concrete does. Then we dig the trenches down to firm ground and clean out the loose dirt, since a footing sitting on crumbs will settle with them. We set the forms and the rebar, the steel bars that keep the concrete from pulling apart under load, and then we wait. The pour goes on the calendar only after the inspector has signed off on the trenches and steel, so the truck isn't showing up for work that hasn't passed. Once it's in, we keep the new concrete from drying out too fast while it cures, the slow hardening that gives it its strength. Footings get buried and nobody looks at them again, which is exactly why I'd put the time and the budget here before anywhere you'll see later.

Footings often come with other work. If the older part of the house has settled and you're building onto it, foundation raising may need to come first so the new work ties into something level, and I'll tell you plainly if it doesn't. When the footing line crosses an existing patio or slab, we use concrete cutting to take out just that strip instead of breaking up the whole thing.

Shasta County's building office requires a grading permit for roads and driveways, land clearing and building pads, and footings aren't on that list, so the list alone doesn't tell you whether your footing job needs a permit. That's a question for the office that covers your address. When a job needs a permit, we check whether your address falls under the City of Redding or the county and work through it with that office as part of the job.

The ground around here is a big part of why I look before we dig. On lots with what soil surveys call Redding soil, there's a duripan, a hard, cemented layer, 20 to 40 inches down, and the state's residential code ties a footing to the lot's drainage, its soil, how close it sits to a slope and a minimum depth, with a soil test on lots that call for one. We run into the same mix of slopes, hard ground and runoff on jobs in Shasta Lake and Anderson, so every lot gets checked rather than assumed. We're based in Redding and work across the area, including Happy Valley, Cottonwood, Red Bluff and other cities nearby.