Concrete driveways, shop slabs and farm pads in Fallon
Irrigated ground, a high water table and sulfate in the soil. Fallon asks more of a concrete mix than anywhere else we pour.
Farm town concrete
Fallon sits in the middle of the Lahontan Valley, built around the Newlands irrigation project, with the Naval Air Station on the edge of town and a farm economy that's been going for over a century. It's the farthest east we work regularly.
The work out here looks like a farm town. Shop and equipment slabs, barn floors, hay and implement pads, wash racks, and driveways sized for trucks and trailers. In town it's driveways, patios, walks and stoops. And we see a fair number of slabs that broke down way faster than they should have, almost always because nobody accounted for what's in the soil.
Sulfate, alkali and water close to the surface
The valley floor is an old lakebed that's been irrigated for over a hundred years. Both of those leave salts near the surface, and in a lot of places that includes sulfate. Sulfate reacts with regular cement and breaks it down from the inside. It starts where the slab touches the ground, and you don't see it until the edges and bottom are falling apart.
The defense is the mix. A sulfate-resistant cement, Type II or Type V depending on how bad it is, plus a low water content so the concrete is dense enough to keep the salts out. That means never watering the mix down at the truck to make it easier to spread. We also keep the base free-draining so the slab isn't sitting in salty water.
The water table is the other half. Across much of the valley it sits a few feet down and comes up during irrigation season. That keeps the ground under a slab wet and pushes moisture up through anything indoors, so every shop floor gets a sealed vapor barrier underneath. No exceptions.
What we pour in Fallon
- Shop and equipment slabs
- Barn floors and wash racks
- Hay and implement pads
- Driveways sized for trucks and trailers
- Driveways, patios and walks in town
Neighborhoods we work in
Downtown Fallon and Maine Street, Rattlesnake Hill, Stillwater, Sheckler, Harmon Junction, the Union District, Soda Lake, Lone Tree, the NAS Fallon area and along Highway 95.
Not on the list? If you're in or near Fallon, we almost certainly cover you. Call (775) 264-5350 and ask.
Fallon questions
How do I know if my soil has enough sulfate to matter?
A soil test is the sure answer, and on a big slab it's worth doing. Short of that, white crust on bare ground, a history of irrigation, and older concrete crumbling at the ground line are all strong hints. Across a lot of the valley we assume it's there and spec the mix to match, because the right cement costs little and the wrong one costs you the slab.
My shop floor is always damp and the epoxy peeled. What happened?
Moisture coming up through the slab, almost certainly. With groundwater this close, a floor poured without a vapor barrier pulls water up forever, and a coating on top traps it until it lets go. There are moisture-tolerant coatings that do better, and we'll be straight about what they can and can't do.
Can you build a slab for a tractor and a loaded trailer?
That's most of what we do out here. It's about how the weight lands: axle loads, jack stands, implement feet, anything stacked in one spot. We size the thickness and rebar for the heaviest thing that'll ever be on it, including the truck backing in.