Concrete Services in Reno, NV | Reno Concrete Pros

Driveways

A driveway is the biggest piece of concrete most people ever buy, and around here it has a rough life. Cars and trucks, freeze-thaw most winter nights, mag chloride dripping off the tires, and the high-desert sun beating on it all summer. Built right, it lasts 30 years or more. Built on bare dirt at three and a half inches with no steel, it's cracked up before the mortgage is half paid.

We pour new driveways, tear out and replace old ones, and add widening strips for a third car or a trailer. On a replacement we break out the old slab, haul it off, dig to grade and compact a rock base. Widenings get steel dowels drilled into the old slab and a clean joint where they meet, so the two don't drift apart.

Ranch-style home with a wide concrete driveway and pine trees behind it — A wide driveway pitched toward the street. Four inches is fine for cars. Trucks and trailers get 5 or 6.

Cost: about $8–$14 a square foot, or $5,000–$10,000 for a typical two-car driveway with tear-out. Time: 2 to 4 days of work.

Patios and outdoor slabs

Back patios, extensions off an old patio, side walks, paths to the shed, fire pit areas and hot tub pads. This is the work that makes a backyard usable, and in Damonte Ranch, the South Meadows, Spanish Springs and Somersett it's most of what we pour.

Two things decide whether a patio still looks good in 15 years: what's under it and which way it slopes. Near the house that usually means dealing with loose backfill instead of pouring right over it. And a patio has to shed water away from the house, about an eighth to a quarter inch per foot, or it'll pond and freeze.

We broom-finish anything you walk on. A slick trowel finish looks sharp in pictures and it's dangerous outside in January.

Curved concrete patio with saw-cut joints poured against an older brick home — A curved patio with saw-cut joints. Curves take a little more forming, and they're worth it.

Cost: about $8–$14 a square foot. A 12×16 patio usually runs $1,900–$3,400. Time: 1 to 3 days.

Driveway approaches and sidewalks

The strip between your driveway and the street, the curb cut, and the public sidewalk in front of your house all sit in the public right-of-way. That means a permit, an inspection, and the city's specs for thickness and slope. On sidewalks it also means meeting ADA cross-slope limits.

In most of the area the property owner is responsible for the sidewalk in front of their house, which surprises a lot of people. If you got a notice from the City of Reno, the City of Sparks or the county, bring it to the estimate. Usually we can replace just the panels it calls out.

Cost: about $1,200–$3,000 for an approach, and $9–$16 a square foot for sidewalk panels. Time: 1 to 2 days, plus permit lead time.

Steps and stoops

Steps are a common call in the older neighborhoods, and they almost always fail the same way: the footing wasn't deep enough. Frost lifts them a little every winter, and after enough winters the risers are all different heights. That's annoying, and it's a real trip hazard.

How deep a footing needs to go depends on where you live. It's shallow on the valley floor and a lot deeper at Incline Village or in Truckee, so we confirm it with whoever will inspect the work. We rebuild steps with even risers, a slight forward pitch so water runs off, a textured finish, and room for a railing if you need one.

On newer houses, stoops usually fail differently. They sit on backfill next to the foundation that kept settling, so they tip toward the house. If the concrete's still solid, lifting it is often the better deal.

Cost: about $1,800–$5,000 to rebuild a set of steps and a stoop, or $600–$2,500 to lift a settled one. Time: 2 to 4 days.

Garage and shop floors

Floors have their own problems. A garage floor gets brine dripping off the cars all winter. A shop floor might carry a two-post lift, a loaded trailer or a tractor. Both need a vapor barrier underneath, which is the step most often skipped and the reason so many old garage floors sweat in the spring and won't hold a coating.

Our usual shop floor is 6 inches over compacted rock with rebar on chairs, a 10 to 15 mil vapor barrier, saw-cut joints laid out in square-ish panels, and a slope to the door or a drain. If a lift is going in, the post spots get thicker footings poured with the slab. Adding that later means cutting up your new floor.

Crew pumping concrete onto a rebar mat for a slab — Pumping a slab onto a rebar mat. For a shop floor, that steel needs to sit up in the middle of the slab, not on the ground.

Cost: about $8–$15 a square foot for a garage floor and $9–$16 for a shop floor. Time: 2 to 5 days.

RV, boat and equipment pads

Camper and boat parking, shed slabs, hot tub pads, generator pads and the little slab under a new AC unit. Pads look like the simplest thing we pour, and they're also the most likely to be done badly, since they're exactly the job people hand to whoever's cheapest.

What matters: thickness for the load (5 inches minimum for an RV, 6 for a big fifth-wheel), drainage so you're not parking on ice in February, a clean tie-in to the driveway with dowels so the two stay level, and real reinforcement, since jacks and stabilizers put a lot of weight on small spots. For a hot tub, tell us the filled weight. It's usually a lot more than people think.

Cost: about $3,000–$7,500 for an RV or boat pad, and $500–$1,800 for a shed, AC or hot tub pad. Time: 1 to 2 days.

Stamped, colored and exposed aggregate

Stamped patterns, integral color, borders and exposed aggregate. Decorative concrete looks great and we're glad to pour it, but you deserve the honest maintenance talk first.

In freeze-thaw country, decorative concrete is more exposed than plain gray, not less. Stamped texture holds water, and that water freezes. Color wears unevenly. Any decorative slab here needs a sealer, and sealers need redoing every two to four years. The high-altitude sun is hard on the glossy film-forming kind, so a penetrating sealer is usually the better pick unless you really want the wet look.

What we recommend most often is a little restraint: a stamped or exposed border around a broom-finished field, or color with a light texture instead of a heavy stamp. It looks deliberate, costs a lot less, and holds up better through a Reno winter than a fully stamped driveway.

Close-up of stamped concrete in a stone pattern — Stamped stone pattern up close. That texture is the look, and it's also where water sits, so it needs a good sealer.

Cost: about $14–$24 a square foot, depending on the pattern and colors. Time: 2 to 5 days, including sealing.

Repair, lifting and resurfacing

Not everything needs replacing, and we'd rather tell you that than sell you a tear-out. Repairs we do all the time:

Crack sealing. The right fix for a stable crack in a solid slab. It keeps water out, which is what makes cracks grow.
Panel replacement. Saw-cut at the joints, pull the bad section, fix what caused it, and pour a new one to match.
Slab lifting. Filling the void under a settled slab that's still in one piece and raising it back up. Often a fraction of the cost of replacing it.
Resurfacing. A bonded overlay on a slab that's sound underneath but scaled on top.
Trip hazards. Grinding down or replacing a raised edge, depending on what's causing it.
Removal. Taking out a patio or pad you'd rather have as yard.

The one thing we won't do is put a repair on a slab that's going to fail anyway. Resurfacing a driveway that's settled and cracked through gets you a new surface that shows every one of those cracks within a season.

Cost: about $300–$1,000 for crack sealing, $450–$1,400 per panel, $600–$2,500 for lifting, and $4–$8 a square foot for resurfacing. Time: most repairs take a day.

Questions about these services

Which of these need a permit?

Anything in the public right-of-way: driveway approaches, curb cuts and public sidewalk. Footings for steps, porches, decks or a garage get permitted as structures. Flatwork that's entirely on your own lot usually doesn't need one. We'll tell you which applies at the estimate and pull whatever's needed.

Can I combine a few of these into one job?

Yes, and it's usually the cheapest way to buy concrete. A lot of the cost is just getting the crew, forms and truck to your house. Pouring the driveway, the front walk and the steps in one trip costs less than three visits, and the finishes match.

Rebar or wire mesh?

For a driveway on a good base, we normally use #4 rebar on a 2-foot grid, up on chairs. Mesh is okay for small pads, but only if it actually stays in the middle of the slab, and in practice it usually gets stepped down into the dirt. Fiber in the mix helps with early cracking but doesn't replace steel.

How soon can I use it?

Walk on it in 24 to 48 hours. Drive a car on it after about 7 days. Keep heavy trucks, trailers, RVs and dumpsters off for 28 days. Cold weather stretches all of that out, and we'll give you real dates for your pour.

Concrete services in Reno and Sparks