Garage floor concrete in Mobile AL - a slab thick enough for your truck

A concrete slab in Mobile usually costs about $5 to $11 per square foot, and that's the area's going rate for a slab, not our price. Slabs with rebar, steel bars set inside the concrete to keep cracks from pulling apart, cost more per square foot than plain pads, and tearing out an old floor or rebuilding the base adds to the job. I'll give you the figure for your floor once I've seen it.

Plan on about a week without your garage, because one cost guide says a new slab should be walkable within 48 hours and calls a week the safe wait before heavier loads like a car. Curing, the slow hardening that gives concrete its strength, takes about a month in all, so the floor keeps getting stronger after you're parked on it. We'll set the pour date with that week in mind.

Sometimes, but resurfacing the whole floor only makes sense when the damage is shallow and spread across most of it. Most damage is one of a few kinds, like cracks, scaling where the top flakes off, spalling where chunks break out, or popouts where small pieces near the surface pop loose, and each has its own repair. A floor that's sinking or broken through usually needs new concrete, and I'll tell you which one you've got.

Possibly, and we find out before any work starts by checking with the office that covers your address. Mobile County Inspection Services says almost any home or business work in the county needs a permit, though its list names things like painting, cabinets and fences rather than garage floors, and it doesn't say whether that reaches homes inside city limits. Inside the city, permits go through Build Mobile, and we handle the paperwork when your job needs one.

Yes, when the job costs more than $10,000, because the Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board's law covers paid repair or improvement of someone else's home above that amount. If you plan to act as your own contractor, the board says paying someone to supervise the job means you're not, and a subcontractor you hire under that exemption must be licensed when their part runs over that same amount.

Almost every slab cracks somewhere as it dries and shrinks, so the real question is where. Control joints, straight cuts sawed into the slab, let those cracks form at chosen spots, and national industry guidance puts the cutting usually within 4 to 12 hours after the pour. Ask any contractor who cuts the joints and when, because joints cut late or skipped leave cracks wherever the slab picks.