Concrete driveway building in Pembroke Pines FL - a slab built for what you park on it

Most calls start with a driveway that has cracked across, sunk at one end or holds a puddle every time it rains, and patching rarely fixes that because the real trouble is usually the base underneath. The price moves with the size of the driveway, how much old concrete or asphalt has to come out, how thick the slab needs to be for what you park on it and whether you want a plain or decorative finish. The schedule turns on the permit and on curing, the wait while new concrete hardens before it can take a car. When your job needs a permit, we take care of the application and the city's paperwork as part of the work, and at the estimate I walk the driveway with you and explain what's in your price.

Before I quote a driveway, I ask what you'll park on it, because a heavy work truck changes what the slab has to handle. Then we break out and haul off the old surface, dig down to firm ground and pack the subgrade, the base the slab sits on, so it doesn't settle under the new concrete the way a raked-flat base does. We set the forms so the slab slopes away from your house toward somewhere the water can go, place the reinforcement and pour early in the day, because concrete finished in midday heat can end up with a weak, dusty top. We give it a broom finish, a light texture dragged across the surface so tires and shoes grip when it's wet. Concrete shrinks as it cures and nearly every slab cracks somewhere, so we cut control joints, shallow grooves that give it a straight place to crack, before it picks a spot on its own. Last, we work out with you where you'll park while it cures so nobody drives on it too soon. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather you skip a fancy finish than cut the base, because a finish can be changed later and a bad base can't be fixed without tearing the driveway out.

If the yard needs work too, it can make sense to plan a concrete patio at the same time so we look at drainage around the whole house at once. If you want more than a plain broom finish, stamped concrete can give the driveway a pattern, though I'll tell you plainly that the pattern sits on the same base and won't make up for a poor one.

In Pembroke Pines, the city's Building and Zoning Department issues the permit for paving or repaving a driveway entrance across the swale, the drainage strip between your yard and the road, and the city lets that street-side apron be concrete instead of asphalt. If the city later works in the road right-of-way, the public land along the street, it repairs or replaces your apron only if you pay the city that cost within 90 days after its work begins. Where it's unclear what your job needs, we check with the building office before anything starts.

When the job is worth more than $5,000, the city also wants a Notice of Commencement, a notice that work is starting on your property, recorded, turned in and posted at the house, and properties in the South Broward Drainage District need a permit release from that district too. We're based in Pembroke Pines and work across the cities around it in Broward and Miami-Dade, and we meet the same street-side aprons and swales on driveway jobs in Miramar and Davie.