Garage floor concrete in Monrovia CA - a slab that holds up under your car

Most calls start the same way. The cracks have gotten wider, a section has dropped, or water sits in one corner after it rains. The price moves with the size of the garage, whether the old slab comes out and gets hauled, how much base work it needs and whether you plan to coat it later. The schedule turns on breaking out the old floor, checking with the city and the cure time before the car goes back in, and the estimate gives you your own number.

I look at the cracks first and tell you whether filling them will do or the slab has to come out. If filling will do, we clean the cracks out and fill them. If the floor is coming out, we break it up and haul it away, then dig out and pack the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, because a base that's only raked level settles and takes the new floor down with it. We check which way the water runs so the floor drains out the door and not back toward the house. Then we set rebar, the steel inside that holds the slab together, pour and finish it, and let it cure, the wait while it gains strength. We cut control joints early, shallow grooves that give the concrete a planned place to crack, before it picks its own spot. If the budget gets tight, I'd keep the money in the base over the finish, because a surface can be redone later and a bad base means tearing it all out. If you want a coating down the road, we plan the new floor with that in mind.

Some garage jobs tie into other work. If you want the floor, or the driveway leading to it, to look like more than plain gray, our decorative concrete work adds color and texture. When the garage or driveway is cut into a slope that needs holding back, we build concrete retaining walls as part of the same plan.

In Monrovia, Building Services handles work on private property, and the first step is to meet with Building & Safety staff to find out whether plan review is required. Whether your garage floor needs a permit is the city's call, so we check with the office that covers your address before we set a date. If it needs one, we sort out who pulls it and get it in hand before work starts. If you'd like to ask yourself, Building Services takes private-property questions at (626) 932-5581 or building@monroviaca.gov. The old slab has to go somewhere, and you can apply to the city for a no-fee encroachment permit for a dumpster or roll-off bin. It's good for 14 days from the day it's issued, so we line up the bin dates to fit inside that window.

We're based in Monrovia and work across the San Gabriel Valley. A lot of the garages we see here are older, often detached and set back at the end of a long driveway, so getting the old concrete out is part of what I look at on the estimate. Summer heat matters too, because pouring at midday dries the top too fast and leaves it weak and dusty later, so on hot days we pour early. We see the same kind of older garage on jobs in Arcadia and Pasadena.