Concrete Driveways, Patios and Slabs in Burleson, TX

The driveway from the road to the house down here is often long enough to be its own project. That changes two things. First, the volume: at 4 inches, every 100 square feet is about 1.4 cubic yards with waste, so a long ribbon drive can run past a single 10-yard ready-mix load and into a second truck. Second, the layout: a long narrow slab still needs panels that stay near square, so joints get cut about every 8 to 10 feet on 4 inches rather than left as a hundred-foot strip waiting to crack across.

Where a drive is going to carry a loaded trailer, a tractor, a work truck or an RV, we take it to 5 or 6 inches with a rebar grid on chairs. Six inches adds roughly 18 percent to the per-foot price and it is the cheapest insurance on the list, because a 4-inch slab under repeated heavy loads breaks at the edges first and there is no fixing that except pouring it again.

Turnarounds, a pad by the shop, and the apron where the drive meets the road usually come up in the same conversation. Say them all out loud at the site visit — adding to a pour that is already booked costs a fraction of what it costs as a second job.

Bigger lots mean more buildings that are not the house: a metal shop, a workshop, a barn, a carport, a pad for a trailer or a piece of equipment. A slab under a building is a different animal from flatwork. We pour a monolithic turn-down slab where the perimeter thickens to 12 inches or more with steel in the bottom of the beam, poured in one piece with the floor so there is no cold joint for water to find, and we set anchor bolts wet to the building’s bolt pattern rather than drilling them in afterward.

Under an enclosed building the base gets a polyethylene vapor barrier before the steel goes in. Without one, ground moisture comes up through the slab and shows as sweating floors and rusted tools. Open carports and outdoor equipment pads do not need it.

If your building supplier ships engineered foundation drawings with the kit, send them to us and we pour to those. If nobody has provided a spec, tell us what is going in the building and we will size the thickness, the steel and the thickened sections under post lines. Our sister shop CJM Metals builds the steel carports and shops that sit on a lot of these pads, so the anchor layout gets worked out between the two crews instead of guessed at.

North Texas summer decides pour times, not preference. Heat pulls water out of the surface faster than the slab can bleed it, and a slab that dries too fast finishes weak and dusts later. So summer pours start early, get wet-cured or hit with a curing compound, and the joints are cut the same day or first thing the next morning. January brings the opposite: cold slows the set, the crew waits longer to finish, and the cure schedule stretches out.

Because Burleson is a longer drive, give us your dates rather than a single deadline when you ask. The more room there is in the window, the more likely your job lands on a day we are already pouring south, and the easier it is to hold an early start when the forecast says 101.

Once it is down, the dates are the dates: walk on it after about 24 hours, park a car after 7 days on 4 or 5 inches and 10 days on 6, and keep loaded trailers and heavy equipment off for 14 days on 4 or 5 inches and 28 on 6. That last number is when concrete reaches design strength, and it is the one people rush.