Slab foundation building in Saratoga CA - built for the ground under your house

Most people who call about a slab are planning a new house, an addition or a backyard building, and the concrete is the last piece of a longer process. The price moves with the size of the slab, the thickness and steel your engineer calls for, whether it's post-tensioned or conventional, how much digging a sloped lot needs and how many pipes run through it. The schedule turns more on paperwork than on the pour, because the soils report, the city's review and the inspections all come first, and weather can still push a pour day. If you're only adding a porch or a small deck, concrete footings may be all you need. Either way, I write your estimate after I've seen the lot and read the plans, so the number fits your job instead of a guess.

We start from your engineer's plans and soils report, and before anything's ordered I sit down with you and talk through the two main choices, a post-tensioned slab with steel cables pulled tight once the concrete hardens, or a conventional slab reinforced with rebar, the steel bars that hold concrete together when it moves. Then our crew digs the footings, cuts and packs the subgrade, the soil the slab rests on, so it doesn't settle later, and sets the forms and steel. Plumbing, conduit and the vapor retarder go in and get checked before any concrete does, because once it's poured, a missed pipe means a saw and a jackhammer. We pour early in the day so afternoon heat doesn't dry the top too fast and leave it weak and dusty, and then the slab cures, a wait while it gains strength before framing goes on it. If something in the budget has to give, I won't let it be the base, because nobody sees it once the concrete's down and it's the part that keeps your house level.

Some plans don't call for a slab at all. If your engineer specs a raised floor or a deeper perimeter foundation, that's our foundation installation work, and it starts from the same soils report. On small commercial or multi-unit projects, the building's slab and the paved area around it usually get planned together, so we take on concrete parking lot building too, with the same care for what's underneath.

The City of Saratoga issues building permits here, and you apply through the city's online eTrakit system, which is also where you track the permit and trade documents with the city. I check early on what the city wants for your slab, and when a permit applies we handle the contractor's side and help you with the parts that fall to you as the owner.

Saratoga's lots add their own steps. On hillsides with landslide potential and near creeks where the ground could liquefy in an earthquake, the city requires geotechnical clearance before a new building, addition or basement goes ahead. A new house or an accessory building over 250 square feet also needs design review by the Planning Department, and the city calls for an arborist's review when a protected tree's dripline, the outer edge of its canopy, comes within five feet of the work, even when the tree is your neighbor's. Each of those has to clear before we can set a pour date, so I ask about slopes, creeks and big trees at the first visit. We're based in Saratoga and work across the cities around it, and we run into the same steep driveways and tight access on jobs in Los Gatos and Cupertino.