Concrete floor installation in Springfield IL - a level surface that holds up to wear

Most of the floors I'm asked about are in basements, workshops, sheds and additions, where the old slab has cracked, sunk or gone dusty, or where there's only dirt or gravel today. The price comes down mostly to the size of the floor, how much digging and base work the ground needs, whether the slab is reinforced and what's going on top of it. The schedule turns on how easily we can get materials and the concrete into the space, the weather on pour day and how long the slab has to rest before you use it. If the job is a garage, our garage floor concrete page goes into that work. I'd like you to know exactly what you're paying for before we start, so when I come out I measure, look at the ground and put each part of the job in writing.

We start underneath, because that's where most of the failed slabs I used to repair went wrong. Our crew digs out soft soil and packs the subgrade, the ground the slab rests on, so the floor doesn't settle with the dirt later. If a covering is going on top, we lay the vapor layer, a sheet that holds back moisture rising from the ground, and keep it whole by patching any tear before the pour. Where the plan calls for it, we set rebar, the steel that helps hold the slab together, then place the concrete and finish it. From there an indoor floor comes down to timing, so we watch the concrete and decide when to trowel it smooth, when to cut the control joints, the shallow cuts that give cracks a straight place to form, and when to start curing, the slow, damp rest that lets concrete gain its strength. If the budget has to give somewhere, I'd rather you spend it on the base than on a fancier surface, because a top can be refinished later but bad ground means tearing the floor out.

A new floor often has other concrete around it. When the space sits above the yard, we can build concrete steps at the door during the same job, and if it opens onto a pool, our concrete pool decks get the same care with the base and the drainage.

Springfield's Building & Zoning Department issues building permits, and if your property sits in a floodplain, the city's floodplain development permit has to come first. Whether your floor needs a permit is the city's call, so we check what the office asks for at your address and take care of the paperwork for our work when a permit applies. The city's permit also makes no promise that your land suits the project, and it leaves soil compaction and mine subsidence research, a check for ground sinking over old mines, with you as the owner and with whoever applies. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has more on that research at 217-782-0588. I look closely at the ground on my first visit and let you know early about anything the office will ask of you.

Many of the floors we see here are in older houses and outbuildings where the first slab went down over loosely filled ground, so we plan on digging out and repacking more than the surface suggests. We meet the same kind of floors on jobs in Chatham and Decatur, and we work across the cities around Springfield, so if yours isn't listed, please ask about your address.