Concrete footings in Pembroke Pines FL - steel checked before it's buried

Most people call us because they're adding a room, putting up a garden wall or setting columns for a porch, and the plans call for footings before anything else can happen. The price moves with how many feet of footing you need, how wide and deep the drawings make it, how much digging and hauling your yard takes and how much steel goes in. The schedule turns mostly on the permit and on getting the steel inspected before we pour, more than on the pour itself. At the estimate I walk the job with you and explain what's in the price, so you know what each part of it pays for.

We start by marking the footing out on your property against the plans, then dig the trench to the width and depth they call for and clean the loose dirt out of the bottom, because a footing sitting on loose fill settles right along with it. Next we set the forms and the rebar, the steel bars that hold the concrete together when the load tries to bend it, up on supports so the steel sits inside the pour instead of lying in the dirt. Footings end up buried, so I want that steel checked and right before any concrete covers it, and we set the pour date around that check, not the other way around. Then we pour early in the day so the heat doesn't dry the concrete too fast, work it into every corner so there are no hollow spots, and let it cure, the slow hardening that gives concrete its strength, before anything goes on top.

Sometimes the footing isn't the only work. If a slab or wall near your project has already sunk, foundation raising may be the better first step, and when a new footing has to run through an old patio or driveway, we use concrete cutting to get through it without wrecking the rest.

In Pembroke Pines, the city's Building Department issues building permits for most construction and improvement work, and its list names additions, renovations and structural changes, not footings by themselves. That list doesn't settle whether your footing job needs a permit, and the city warns that starting without a required one can bring penalties, delays and added costs, so it asks owners who aren't sure to contact the Building Department first. That's what we do. We check with the city's building office before anything starts, and when your job needs a permit, we take care of the application and the paperwork the city asks for as part of the work.

We're based in Pembroke Pines and work across the cities around it in Broward and Miami-Dade, and most footing calls are for additions, walls and porch columns behind houses with fenced backyards, the same work we do on jobs in Miramar and Davie. Fenced yards matter here because the city asks owners to tell their assigned inspector ahead of time about gate codes, locked fences or pets, so we go over that with you before an inspection is booked.