Trusted Concrete Contractor in Cedar Rapids

What Cedar Rapids Does to Concrete

Winters here are cold continental with hard freezes. Water gets into cracks and pores, freezes, expands and pushes the concrete apart. After a few seasons that shows up as spalling, cracking and heaving.

The ground adds to it. We work in deep silty clay loam and prairie soils. Clay holds water and moves as it freezes and thaws, so a slab or walk sitting on poorly prepared ground will settle or lift.

The housing stock matters too. The median house here was built in 1973, and nearly half of the homes went up between the 1950s and the 1970s. Most owner-occupied homes are detached houses, so the jobs we see most are single-family driveways, walks and foundations, often on mid-century lots where the original concrete has cracked and gone uneven.

The Work We Do

We handle driveways, sidewalks and house foundations, whether that means a new pour or tearing out and replacing what's failed. When a homeowner calls about a cracked or sunken slab, we look at why it failed before we talk about replacing it. If the cause is still under the concrete, a new pour on top of it fails the same way.

We serve Cedar Rapids and the surrounding area.

Prep Is Where the Job Is Won

Concrete only lasts as long as the ground under it. On every job we excavate to the required depth, remove soft spots and prepare a level subgrade. Then we grade and compact the subgrade and place and compact an aggregate subbase where it's specified.

In clay soil, that prep is what lets a slab get through freeze-thaw without moving. We also look at where water goes. If it ponds against or under the concrete, the freeze will find it.

Our written quote includes the prep as its own part of the price, so you can see what's going into the ground as well as what's on top of it.

How to Get Started

Call us and tell us what the concrete has been doing, whether water sits on it, and what you want the finished job to look like. We'll come out and look at the site and the existing concrete, then give you a written quote covering what we found and what we propose to do.

The exact price is confirmed once we've seen the job, since it depends on size, site conditions and how much prep the ground needs. If a repair is all you need, we'll say so. If replacement is the better call, we'll explain why.