Foundation installation in Pembroke Pines FL - a slab ready for your pipes and floors

If you're planning a new house, an addition or a building on an empty lot, the slab is the first thing that goes in and the hardest thing to change later. The price moves with the slab's size, how much digging or fill it takes to get the floor to the right height, and how many pipes and lines run through it. The schedule turns mostly on the permit and on your plans being final, because nothing gets poured until every line is placed, and after the pour the concrete has to cure, which is the wait while it gains strength before it takes any load. Your own number comes from the estimate, where I explain what's in the price.

It starts at a table, not in the dirt. The pipes and lines that run through a slab have to be placed before the pour, because there's no crawlspace to run them later, so I sit down with you and your plans and mark where each one goes. I also ask what floors you're putting down, so moisture gets handled the right way for them. Then our crew digs out the footprint and packs the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, instead of just raking it level, because a slab settles right along with loose dirt. We set the forms, place the lines where we marked them, lay the rebar, the steel inside that holds the slab together and keeps cracks from spreading, and pour early enough to stay out of the midday heat that leaves a weak, dusty top. If the budget gets tight, I'll tell you plainly to save somewhere else, since the base is buried on the first day and it's the one part you can't go back to.

Some jobs need more than the slab itself. When your plans call for concrete footings, the deeper strips and pads of concrete that carry walls and posts, we pour them as part of the same job so they line up with the slab. On a business property, we can also take on concrete parking lot building around the new building, graded so water runs away from the doors.

The City of Pembroke Pines Building Department issues building permits for most construction and improvement projects, but its list names structural changes, additions and renovations, not foundation work, so that list alone doesn't settle what your slab needs. When your job needs a permit, we take care of the application and the paperwork the city asks for as part of the work, and if it's unclear, we check with the city's building office before anything starts. Digging and fill can bring a second permit, because the city's Engineering Division issues engineering permits for construction on private property, and its list includes excavation, fill and drainage lines. That comes up when a lot needs fill to bring the floor up to the height the flood map sets, which we cover in the questions below.

The ground itself is the other thing I look at. Parts of South Florida have organic soils that compress more and hold less weight, so they're less suited to building on, and I want to know what's under your lot before we plan the slab. We're based in Pembroke Pines and work across the cities around it in Broward and Miami-Dade, and we run into the same low lots and fill questions on jobs in Miramar and Davie.