Concrete cutting in Peoria IL - clean openings right where you need them

I'm the owner of Liberty Peoria Concrete Construction, and we take these calls from Peoria and the cities around it, out toward Bloomington and Normal. Most of them start the same way, with a homeowner standing in the basement or on the driveway, pointing at a spot and asking how bad this is going to be. The price mostly comes down to how far we cut, how thick the concrete is, how much steel is in it, whether it's a floor or a wall and how hard it is to get the saw to the spot. The schedule turns on what the city wants for the work and on anything we need to know before the blade touches it, so I'll give you your own number when I come out and measure.

I start by matching the tool to the job, because the size of the opening and the thickness of the concrete decide what fits: a flat saw for straight cuts across a floor, driveway or patio, a wall saw that rides a track for a door or window in a foundation wall, a core drill for round holes for pipes, drains and conduit, a hand saw for tight spots and small openings, and a wire saw for thick or heavily reinforced sections. Before any of that comes off the truck, we talk about scanning the slab, since rebar, the steel bars that strengthen concrete, and anything else buried in there don't show from the top. For a cut inside a basement, I tell you what runs the saw before it comes through your door, so you know exactly what's going to be running in your house. Most of this sawing runs wet, with water cooling the blade and turning the dust into a gray slurry, and that water has to go somewhere, so we plan where it runs and vacuum it up or contain it as we go.

A lot of cutting is the first half of a bigger job. Once a cracked or sunken section comes out, we can pour the new piece as part of our concrete driveway building work, and when a patio has to be cut back for a drain or a new door, concrete patio construction picks up where the saw left off.

In Peoria, the city's Development Center issues permits for changing walls, enlarging a door or window opening and changing plumbing. Concrete cutting isn't named on that list, but the reason you're cutting often is, so it's worth asking them about your job instead of guessing. Before we schedule, we look into what the city wants, handle the permit paperwork when it's ours to file and tell you plainly if anything falls on your end. Anything in the public right-of-way, like the sidewalk or the drive approach out by the street, goes through the city's Public Works Department instead, and the city only issues those sidewalk and drive approach permits to contractors it licenses for right-of-way work.

Around Peoria, a lot of our cutting calls are older basements and garage floors getting opened for a new drain or a bigger window, and we get the same calls from East Peoria and Peoria Heights. In those houses, the tricky part is usually getting the saw down the stairs and keeping the water off whatever's finished nearby.