Garage floor concrete in Ventura CA - a solid slab built on a packed base

Most people call us because their floor is cracked, sunk in one corner or holding water, and when only part of an old slab has to come out cleanly, concrete cutting can be part of the job. The price mostly comes down to the size of the garage, whether old concrete has to be broken out and hauled away, how much base work the ground needs and whether you need a thicker, reinforced slab for heavy loads. The schedule turns on the same things, plus whether your address needs a permit and finding a pour time that isn't in the afternoon heat. I'll go over all of it when I come out, and the estimate is where you get a figure for your own garage.

I start by asking how you use the garage, because a floor for two cars and a workbench isn't built the same as one for an RV or a lift. Then our crew breaks out and hauls off the old slab, digs down to firm ground and packs the subgrade, the soil and gravel the slab sits on, in even layers so no spot settles faster than the rest. If I had to pick where your money goes, it's the base over a fancy finish on top, since you'll never see it again and it decides whether the floor stays flat. We set the forms with a slope toward the door, add rebar, the steel that holds a slab together, where the load calls for it, and pour early in the day so the heat doesn't dry the top before we finish it. Once the surface is smooth, we cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the concrete a place to crack in a straight line instead of wherever it likes, and we clean up before we leave.

Garage work often touches the concrete around it. If you'd like the apron, a side walkway or the patio out back to have some color or texture, we handle that as decorative concrete, and if your garage is cut into a slope, a concrete retaining wall keeps the hillside from pushing on the slab or washing dirt across it.

The city's list doesn't settle whether a garage floor in Ventura needs a permit. The Building and Safety Division issues permits, and its list names new buildings, additions and tenant improvements, not garage floors, so the right move is to ask the city's Permit Services at permits@cityofventura.ca.gov or 805-654-7869. When a job does need a permit, we figure out which city or county office covers your address and take care of the paperwork with them. On a permitted job, someone has to let the inspector in to see the work, so we'll settle with you ahead of time whether that's us or you.

Ventura County's stormwater permit requires pollution controls on every construction job, in wet weather and dry, and it puts that on property owners and contractors alike. For us that mostly means pour day, so we keep concrete waste and washout water contained and out of the gutter until it's hauled off. We're based in Ventura and work across the cities around it, and we keep the same controls in place on jobs in Oxnard and Camarillo.