Concrete contractor in Pekin, IL - driveways, patios and steps on a solid base

Winter is what wears concrete down around here. Weather records for nearby Peoria put the first measurable snow around late November and the last around late March, with about 22 days of measurable snow in an average year, and each one means shovels, plows and salt on your driveway and steps. Water that soaks into the top and freezes pops the surface off, which is the chipping and flaking folks call us about. So we slope the slab to shed water and let it cure, the stretch where it slowly hardens and gains strength, before it takes traffic or salt.

Most of the sinking and pooling water we're called about here starts under the old slab. The subgrade, the ground the concrete sits on, was raked flat instead of dug out and packed, or the slab tips back toward the house and sends water at the foundation. We dig down past the soft stuff, pack a stone base and set the slope away from your house before any concrete shows up.

Building permits here come from the Community Development Department at the City of Pekin, and they cover new buildings, additions, alterations and renovations before any work starts. On a job that needs one, we don't set a pour date until the permit's in hand, so the city's review is often the first thing that moves your start. You can check up on any contractor, too, because the city requires a General Business Registration License for every business, and anyone working on your property has to be licensed or registered with its Building Division. We're licensed and insured, and before we schedule, I look into what the city wants for your job, handle the paperwork when it's ours to file and tell you plainly if anything lands on your end. Your price mostly turns on the size of the job and how much tear-out and base work it needs, your schedule turns on the permit and the weather, and the estimate is where you get the figure for your own job.

Pekin is an easy run down from Peoria, so our crew and the concrete truck can be on your street early, which is when we like to pour. We work all over this side of the river, from Morton out to Eureka, and the same crew brings the same habits about the base wherever we go.

Pekin sits on the Illinois River just downstream from Peoria, and on our jobs here the houses run from older homes on tight lots near downtown and the riverfront to newer subdivisions with long driveways and two-car garages farther out. Homes close to the river often fall under floodway rules, so foundation and slab work down there starts with paperwork before it starts with a shovel.

Like up the river in East Peoria, plenty of Pekin's older driveways and patios were poured on a thin, settled base, so the job here usually starts with digging down to solid ground and building it back up right.