Slab foundation building in Williston ND - a floor that stays level through winter

Most people who call about a slab already have a lot, a builder and a date they'd like to hit. The price moves with the size and thickness of the slab, how much digging and base work the lot needs, the edge and insulation design and whether the floor needs moisture protection under it. The schedule turns on the permit, the inspection and the weather, and you get your own price when I come out and write up the estimate. If you only need a new floor inside a garage that's already standing, that's garage floor concrete instead.

Before anyone digs, I sit down with you and your builder to go over the frost design and the slab edge, and I ask what flooring you want, because concrete industry guidance calls for moisture protection under a slab that will get carpet, tile, wood or other flooring. Vapor coming up through the concrete can loosen the glue and warp or stain the floor, and that's far easier to stop under the slab than after. Then we dig out and pack the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, since a base that's only raked level settles right along with the dirt. Cold-climate building guidance is to slope the ground away from the foundation and use free-draining backfill and a footing drain, so we plan where the water goes before the forms go up. The edge insulation, the vapor barrier and the rebar, the steel that holds the slab together, go in next, and the pour waits for the inspection. If the budget gets tight, the base is the last place I'd cut, because nobody sees it the day we pour and everybody sees it years later.

Some buildings need more than a slab, like a basement or frost walls, and that's foundation installation, which we can plan alongside the floor. Small business owners putting up a shop often want the ground around it done too, so we also handle concrete parking lot building on the same site.

Which office handles your permit depends on where the lot sits. Inside the city, Williston's Building Safety issues residential building permits, and its list of accessory structures names detached garages and yard sheds over 120 square feet but says nothing about slab foundations, so the list alone doesn't settle whether your slab needs one. Under Williams County, you need a building permit before you build any building or structure, and before any grading or drainage work. The county also calls for an inspection of footings and structural slabs once the forms and steel are in and before any concrete is placed, so in the county's area the pour date waits on that inspection. Before work starts, we figure out with you whether the city or the county covers your address, and we take care of the permit paperwork when the job calls for one.

Winters here are long and the pour season is short, so most of our slab work around Williston and the cities near it comes down to timing the pour and protecting the edge. We see a lot of new garages and shops going up on open lots, and the same frost questions come up on every one.