Concrete floor installation in La Palma CA - a slab ready for your flooring

Most floor calls start with an old slab that's cracked, sunk or pushing the tile up, or with a room getting a real floor for the first time. The price moves with the size of the floor, how much digging and base work it needs, whether the slab gets steel in it, how we handle moisture underneath and whether you want a stain or decorative finish. The schedule mostly turns on whether the city wants to review plans and on the curing wait before your flooring can go down, and for your own number I'll come out and put an estimate in writing. If it's a garage you'll park in, that's our garage floor concrete work.

Before we dig, I ask what's going on top of the floor, because tile, wood, glue-down flooring or a coating each changes how we deal with moisture coming up from underneath. Our crew takes out the old slab or soil and packs the subgrade, the dirt and base the slab sits on, firm and level, since a base that's only raked flat settles later and takes the floor with it. We check where water runs outside so it isn't headed under the house, lay the moisture barrier that suits your flooring, and set the steel up on supports so it ends up inside the concrete instead of lying in the dirt, and I'll show you how it's placed before the pour. We pour early, before the midday heat can leave a weak, dusty top, trowel it smooth for flooring, cut control joints, shallow lines that give the slab a planned place to crack, while the concrete is still young enough for them to work, and keep it damp while it cures, the slow hardening that gives concrete its strength. If something has to give in the budget, I'd rather you go simpler on the finish than on the base, because nobody sees the base on day one but it's what decides whether the floor stays flat.

The same visit can cover work outside the room. If the new floor opens onto the backyard, we can carry the same base work out to the water with a concrete pool deck, and if the floor changes the height at a door, concrete steps give you a solid, even way down to the yard.

Whether a new floor at your house needs a permit is up to the City of La Palma, and the place to ask is the permit counter at City Hall. The city issues permits online, and almost every set of improvement plans goes through plan check, a review before the permit is issued, which often sets the start date. When your job needs a permit, we handle the application, and you can see how the process works on the city's permits and inspections page. The city also adds its own changes to the state building rules, and in areas California maps as liquefaction zones, ground that can lose its strength in a strong quake, the soil under a building people live in has to be looked into and countermeasures built in, which cities work into their permit review.

We're based in La Palma and work in the cities around it, and most of the houses we see sit on concrete slabs, with floor calls usually coming from additions, garage conversions or an old slab that's settled near a door. We meet the same kinds of houses on jobs in Cypress and Buena Park, so how the yard drains around the house is part of every estimate we write.