Concrete Floor Installation in Hawthorne CA - a level slab ready for tile or wood

A new concrete slab in the Los Angeles area usually costs about $5 to $14 per square foot. Where yours lands depends on the base work, the moisture protection your flooring needs and whether the slab is reinforced, which one Los Angeles cost guide prices higher than an unreinforced pad. I'll give you your own figure in a written estimate that lists what's included and what isn't.

Some small, random cracking should be expected in any concrete floor, and steel in the slab won't stop it. What rebar does, when it's sized and placed right, is hold cracks tightly closed, so please ask me how your slab will be reinforced. We also plan to saw control joints, shallow cuts that give the slab a chosen place to crack, soon after the pour, because cut late they leave cracks in places nobody picked.

A new slab should be walkable within about 48 hours, though concrete takes 28 to 30 days to cure fully, which is the time it spends gaining strength as it hardens. Waiting about a week before heavier loads may be safer, so I'd plan on furniture and appliances after that. We'll set your move-in steps around those points when I write the estimate.

Yes, a slab that will be covered with tile, wood, carpet, resilient flooring or a seamless poured floor needs protection from ground moisture coming up through it. Without it, water vapor can make adhesives fail and the flooring come loose, warp or discolor, which is why I ask what's going on top before we pour. Placing concrete right on a vapor retarder, a plastic sheet under the slab that slows moisture, can bring some minor cracking, but moisture failures in flooring are common enough that this is considered the more acceptable risk.

In California, forming, pouring and finishing flat concrete work like a floor falls under the state licensing board's concrete contractor license. Someone without a license can only take on work up to $1,000, and only when the job needs no permit and they have no one working for them on it. We're fully licensed and insured, and before work starts I'll go over the contract terms with you, since the state sets special rules for home improvement contracts to head off misunderstandings.

Type your address into the state's EQ Zapp lookup, which shows whether the property sits in a mapped earthquake hazard zone or hasn't been evaluated yet. Single family frame houses up to two stories, outside a development of four or more units, are exempt from the state rules tied to those maps, though local agencies can be stricter. If your job needs a permit, I'll tell you at the estimate, and we'll handle the application with the office that issues it and arrange the inspections.