Englewood Garage Floor Contractors

Most people who call about a garage floor haven't decided anything yet. They've decided they're annoyed. It's dusty, or there's a crack you can feel through a shoe, or a puddle parks by the door every February. Between that annoyance and a new slab sit three or four different choices that cost wildly different amounts.

Worth saying plainly: plenty of garage floors don't need replacing. Older houses in Northwest Englewood often sit on slabs poured thinner than anybody would pour today, over a base nobody wrote down, and a good number of them are still flat and sound. Meanwhile a newer-looking floor over in Broadway Estates can be the one riding on ground that shifted. Which failure you have decides whether you're buying a tube of joint filler or a week without a garage.

Start with what the floor has to do, not what it looks like

A slab that parks two sedans and holds a lawnmower is being asked for almost nothing. Cosmetic problems on that floor stay cosmetic. Grind it, coat it, live with it. But put a two-post lift on the same slab, or roll a loaded trailer across it twice a month, and it's suddenly being asked for something nobody built into it.

So the first conversation is about use, not appearance. We've told people their ugly floor is fine and told other people their clean floor has to come out.

What we ask before recommending anything

• What the space does besides park cars: shop, storage, freezer, home gym
• Whether anything heavy is coming, like a lift, a safe, or a boat trailer
• Whether the slab has actually dropped or has only worn on top
• Whether water shows up in there on days it hasn't rained or snowed
• Which way it drains today, and where the slush ends up
• Whether the walls bear on the slab edge or on their own footing
• Whether a coating is in the plan, and how soon after the pour
• How many days you can live without the garage

Replace it now or ride it out

Three things a garage slab has to get right

Moisture first. The ground under a garage stays damp, and with no plastic between it and the concrete that moisture keeps coming up through the slab. It shows as a floor that sweats in spring, white crust at the back wall, or a coating letting go in sheets. Plastic costs almost nothing and cannot be added later.

Then fall toward the door. Cars bring snow in, it melts, and the water either leaves or sits against the wall until it evaporates. Dead flat means a permanent damp line at the back. A slight, steady pitch to the opening fixes it with no drain and no upkeep.

And joints. A garage is a rectangle with one opening, which sounds simple and isn't. The slab will crack; the layout decides whether that happens on a line you chose or somewhere across the middle. We break the floor into roughly square panels and run cuts out from the door corners, where the stress collects.

Scheduling, and how long the garage is out of service

A one or two car garage moves quickly. Tear-out and haul-off take a day, base and forms another, and the pour is a morning. Walk on it in two days, drive on it in a week. What people underestimate is the emptying. Everything on that floor goes somewhere else first.

Timing is kinder here than on exterior work, since a roof means no rain landing on fresh concrete. Spring through fall is easy. Cold weather is workable in a garage tied to the house, because the space holds enough warmth to protect a blanketed pour. Detached and unheated in January is the hard case, and we'd sooner wait out the frost than pour over it.