Arvada Concrete Overlays

We show up to a lot of overlay estimates and spend the first ten minutes not looking at the concrete at all. We're looking at downspouts, sprinkler heads, the grade at the edge of the slab, and where the snow off the roof lands in March. A bonded topping is a wearing surface, not a structure. It inherits every good thing and every bad thing about whatever is holding the old slab up.

When the ground underneath is stable and dry, an overlay is one of the better values in this trade: a whole new surface with texture and color, over concrete that keeps doing the structural work. When the ground underneath is wet, loose, or still moving, it's a nicely finished delay. Telling those two apart is most of what we do before writing a number down.

Where the water is coming from

Nearly every failed slab we look at has a water source within twenty feet of it. A downspout dumping at the corner of a patio soaks the soil right where the slab edge bears. A sprinkler zone throwing onto the concrete every morning keeps the perimeter wet all summer. A patio pitched a hair back toward the house sends every rain into the fill against the foundation, which is the worst possible place for it. None of those problems live in the concrete. All of them show up in the concrete.

So the order of operations matters more than the product. Extend the downspout, turn or cap the head, fix the grade, give the water somewhere to go. Then bond a topping. Do it the other way around and you've put a new surface on a slab that's still going to move, and it will crack over the same joint it was always going to crack over. We'd rather have that conversation at the estimate than a year after the work.

What we check under and around a slab before quoting a topping

• Where every downspout discharges and how far it carries water past the concrete
• Sounding the panels with a hammer to find hollow spots where base has washed out
• Elevation across every joint, since panels at different heights mean the ground already moved
• Whether the original slab went down on compacted road base or straight onto native soil

Water sources, what they leave on the surface, and the fix that comes first

Bond prep, and where the thickness limits sit

Once the water question is settled, the rest is mechanical. A topping doesn't glue itself to concrete; it grips a profile we cut into it. Pressure wash and degrease first, then grind or shot blast until the surface has real tooth, then scrub a bond coat in rather than pour it on. Oil, tire dressing, or an old sealer left behind is a delamination waiting for its first cold snap.

Thickness has both a floor and a ceiling. Too thin and there isn't enough material to hold texture or take abuse. Too thick and the topping starts acting like its own slab, with its own shrinkage and no steel to control it. Most exterior work lands between a quarter and a half inch; past that we'd rather talk about a different system or a replacement. Every existing control joint carries through the new surface, and every crack that's still working gets routed, treated, and given a joint directly above it. Bridging a live crack is the single most common reason these fail early.

Two kinds of ground in Arvada, and the season for this work

The west side communities, Candelas and Leyden Rock and Whisper Creek, sit on ground that was graded and filled before anybody framed a house. Done in a hurry, that fill keeps settling for years, and flatwork is where you notice first. In the older parts of town the ground made up its mind long ago, and the issue there is usually a thin slab poured onto native soil with no real base under it.

Season is tighter than a normal pour. A thin topping has no mass to hold heat and no time to gain strength before temperatures drop, so we place exterior overlays from May into early October, with September the pick of the year. We want nights above freezing for several days after placement, no afternoon cell arriving mid-job, and a slab that isn't hot enough to flash the material off. Interior toppings run all year.