Concrete driveway building in Saratoga CA - a driveway that drains and stays level

Most calls start with a driveway that's cracked, sinking at one end or holding puddles after rain, and the cause is usually underneath, where the base was raked flat instead of dug out and packed, or the old slab was poured falling toward the house. The price moves with the size of the driveway, how much old concrete has to come out, how long and steep the run is and which finish you pick, while the schedule turns mostly on the city permit, the tear-out and the weather. Since every driveway job in Saratoga needs a city permit, we start on that first so it doesn't hold up the pour, and I'll give you your own figure when I come out to write the estimate.

On a long or steep driveway, I walk the whole run from the street to the house on the first visit, because the slope and the weight it has to carry can change the design, and we check where your lot ends near the street before we plan any work there. Then our crew breaks out the old concrete and hauls it off, digs out the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, and packs a gravel base in layers so it doesn't settle with the dirt later. We set the forms so the surface falls away from your house, lay rebar, the steel bars that hold the slab together if it does crack, and pour early in the day, because concrete placed in midday heat can end up with a weak, dusty top. We give it a broom finish, a light texture so tires and shoes grip when it's wet, and cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a planned place to crack, before it has a chance to crack on its own. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather you go plainer on the finish than skimp on the base, because the base is buried on day one and the only way to fix it later is to tear the driveway out.

Plenty of driveway jobs grow into the rest of the yard. If you want a spot out back to sit or grill, we can plan concrete patio construction alongside the driveway, and stamped concrete services can press a stone or brick pattern into either one. Both are flatwork, the flat slabs we pour on the ground, so the same base work and drainage planning apply.

The City of Saratoga requires an encroachment permit for every new, circular, replaced, relocated, repaired or widened driveway, even when the work stops behind the curb, so there's no driveway job here that skips it. We check early on what the city wants for your job, handle the contractor's side of the permit and help you with the parts that fall to you as the owner. The application asks for the completed form, a sketch or drawing of the work and a copy of the contractor's insurance, and we supply our insurance and help you pull the rest together. The city also asks owners to talk with Public Works before putting in concrete, pavers, columns or retaining walls within 15 feet of the street edge, and it says the property line typically sits 5 to 10 feet back from the street, which is why I find where your lot actually ends before we plan anything near the curb.

We're based in Saratoga and work across Saratoga and the cities around it, and a lot of what we see here is hillside lots and houses set well back from the road. The Santa Clara County Fire Department serves the city, so its driveway standard reaches homes here, and the questions below cover how that affects long and steep driveways. We run into the same long, sloped runs on jobs in Los Gatos and Cupertino, and on those we settle the route and the slope before we talk about finishes.