Concrete floor installation in Williston ND - a flat floor planned around the weather

Most calls about floors come from people with a dirt or gravel floor in a shop or outbuilding, or an old slab that has cracked, sunk or stayed damp for years. The price moves mostly with the floor's size, how much digging and base work the ground needs, what goes under the slab and whether the pour lands in a cold month that needs covers or heat. The schedule turns on the weather more than anything else, and the estimate I write after seeing the job gives you the figure for your own floor. If the slab is mostly for parking, our garage floor concrete page has more on that.

On an indoor floor, I start with a talk about what goes under the slab and how we'll time the finishing on your job, because those two things decide how the floor turns out more than the concrete truck does. Then we dig out the soft dirt and pack the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, so it holds the floor up instead of sinking under it. The base is the part nobody sees on day one, so it's the first place people want to save money, and I'd save it somewhere else because a smooth top on a raked, unpacked base settles right along with the dirt. We set the forms at the height the floor needs, lay rebar, the steel bars that hold the slab together, where the job calls for it, then place and finish the concrete and cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a straight place to crack instead of a random one. After that comes curing, the stretch where the floor stays protected while it gains strength, and if it's a cold month we plan the covers or enclosure with you ahead of time.

A new floor often brings other work with it. If the floor leaves a door sitting above the yard, we can pour concrete steps to match, and when the project moves outside to the pool, we build concrete pool decks too.

The City of Williston takes residential building permit applications by email through its Building Safety office, and the work it names includes detached garages and yard sheds over 120 sq. ft. Sidewalks, aprons and approaches go to a different office, Engineering in the Public Works Department. A floor on its own isn't named on the city's list, so whether yours needs a permit is something to settle with the city before we dig. If your address falls under Williams County instead, the county requires a building permit before anyone builds, enlarges, alters, repairs, moves or demolishes a building or structure, and before any grading or drainage work. On a county job with a structural slab, the inspection comes once the forms are done and all the steel is in place, before any concrete goes in. Which office covers a given address isn't always obvious, so before work starts we figure that out with you and handle the permit paperwork when the job calls for one.

Around Williston, a lot of the floors we pour go into garages, shops and outbuildings that aren't heated, and the cold season runs long, so the timing matters as much as the mix. We see the same thing on jobs in the cities around it and plan those floors the same way.