Concrete driveway building in Maricopa AZ - a slab that drains away from your house

Maybe your old driveway is cracked, sinking or holding water, or maybe there's bare dirt where one should be. The price mostly comes down to how big it is, how thick the slab is, whether it gets steel and whether an old driveway has to come out first. The schedule turns on any permit and inspection, the weather on pour day and the cure before you can park on it. We're based in Maricopa and work in the cities around it, and I measure every job myself so the estimate shows your own number before you decide.

I start by looking at where water runs off your lot now, because the new slope has to work with both the street and the garage. Then we dig out the old driveway or the ground and pack the subgrade, the base the slab sits on, so it won't settle along with loose dirt later. Before anything gets poured we talk through thickness and steel based on what you'll park on it, set the forms for the slope and lay out the joints, and you get that jointing plan in writing with the estimate. Control joints are lines cut into the slab so it cracks along them instead of wherever it likes, and your plan should also show an isolation joint, a clean break, wherever the driveway meets the garage floor or a sidewalk. After the pour we give it a broom finish, a light texture that gives tires and shoes some grip, and let it cure. If the budget has to give somewhere, I'd rather it be the finish than the base, because you can redo a surface later but you can't fix what's under a slab without tearing it out.

A driveway is often the first piece of a bigger plan. If you want a concrete patio out back, we can lay it out with the same care for drainage, and if you'd like a patterned border or a whole surface with color and texture, that's stamped concrete, which we can plan into the same layout.

The research I've seen doesn't settle whether the City of Maricopa wants its own permit for a new driveway, so I won't guess. Before work starts we ask the city and take care of the paperwork and inspections if your job needs them. The city only takes plans in digital form, and its inspections include soil density and concrete thickness and durability, the same hidden work we spend the most time on, so build that review into your start date.

Many western states have expansive soils that swell and shrink with moisture, and on those a crushed rock base usually goes under the slab, with a soils engineer judging ground whose type isn't clear. I'd want to see what's under your old driveway before calling it, and we dig out and check the ground the same way on jobs in Casa Grande and Chandler.