Concrete Contractor in East Providence, RI

What does a residential concrete contractor do?

A residential concrete contractor tears out failed concrete, prepares the ground, sets forms and pours new flatwork around your house. For most homeowners that means the driveway, the front steps, the walk to the door and a patio out back. We handle each of those jobs start to finish with our own crew: demolition, hauling, base work, pouring, finishing and cleanup.

The most common call we get is for replacing a cracked driveway that has settled or broken into slabs. Close behind that is rebuilding front steps that have crumbled at the edges or pulled away from the house. We also pour a new backyard patio where there was lawn or a tired set of pavers, lay a walkway from the driveway to the door, and press stamped finishes that look like stone for owners who want something dressier than a broom finish.

Why does concrete crack and crumble so fast in East Providence?

Concrete around here fails for a handful of local reasons, and nearly all of them come back to water and cold. Winters in this part of Rhode Island swing above and below freezing over and over. Water soaks into the surface on a mild afternoon, freezes that night and expands. After enough of those cycles the top layer flakes off. Contractors call that scaling, and it's the rough, pitted look you see on so many older driveways.

Road salt speeds it up. Cars carry brine off Pawtucket Avenue and Taunton Avenue and drip it onto the driveway all winter. Salt pulls in more water and makes each freeze harder on the surface.

The ground matters too. Much of the city sits on sandy glacial soil with pockets of old fill, especially near the old mill and waterfront areas. Fill that was never compacted keeps settling for years, and a slab poured over it sinks along with it. Down by the bay in Riverside, the ground stays wetter, and wet ground heaves more when it freezes.

Finally, a lot of the concrete we tear out was poured in the 1950s and 1960s, when many of the city's capes and ranches went up. It's often only three inches thick, sitting on dirt with no gravel under it. That concrete has simply reached the end of its life.

How do we build concrete that survives a Rhode Island winter?

Good concrete is mostly about what happens before the truck shows up. Here is what goes into every slab we pour:

• A compacted gravel base. We dig out soft soil and old fill, then lay and compact crushed stone so the slab has a firm, draining bed.
• Air-entrained concrete. The mix holds billions of tiny air bubbles that give freezing water room to expand. It's the standard for outdoor concrete in a freeze-thaw climate, and skipping it is why so many slabs scale.
• The right thickness. Four inches for walks and patios, more for driveways that carry trucks.
• Reinforcement and control joints. Steel or fiber holds cracks tight, and cut joints tell the slab where to crack so it happens in a straight line instead of across the middle.
• Pitch for drainage. Every surface slopes away from the house so rain and snowmelt run off instead of sitting against your foundation.
• Proper curing. We keep new concrete from drying too fast in summer and protect it from frost in the shoulder seasons.

What kinds of homes and properties do we work on?

We work all over the city, on every kind of house. In Riverside and Kent Heights it's often post-war capes and ranches with a single-car driveway that's been widened by hand over the years. In Rumford the homes are older and larger, with long driveways, stone walls and steps that deserve care. Around Watchemoket and Six Corners we see multi-family houses with shared driveways, narrow side walks and back stairs that tenants use every day. In Phillipsdale some lots sit on old industrial ground, and we plan the base work around that.

Tight lots are normal here. We plan truck access ahead of time, protect your lawn and the neighbor's fence, and use a pump or wheelbarrows when the truck can't reach the back yard.

Should you repair your concrete or replace it?

Repair makes sense when the concrete is still sound and the problem is small: a hairline crack, a single corner that chipped, or a joint that needs sealing. Replacement makes sense when the slab has sunk, heaved, broken into pieces or lost its surface over a large area. Patching over a slab that's moving underneath just buys a season or two. When we come out, we'll tell you plainly which one your concrete needs, and if a repair will do the job, that's what we'll recommend.

What happens on the day we pour?

Most driveway and patio jobs take two to four days from demolition to finished surface. We break out and haul away the old concrete, grade and compact the base, set forms, then pour and finish. You can walk on new concrete the next day and drive on it after about a week. We'll give you simple written instructions for the first month, including no rock salt the first winter. You can read more about how we run a job and what we expect of our crew.