Dead grass, a wobbly table with one leg sunk in a gopher hole, and nowhere flat to sit.
Ask anybody here what they do outside when it hits a hundred and five, and the answer is: wait. Then the sun drops behind the fence, everyone comes out, and the plastic chairs start tipping over in the dirt all over again.
That is usually the call I get. We pour a concrete patio for folks across Visalia, from the older homes off Mooney to the newer tracts north of 198, and a backyard concrete patio is the one addition that gets used every evening from the day it is ready.
What moves the price is mostly square footage, how the truck reaches the back of the house, how thick the slab needs to be for what you plan to put on it, how much old cement patio and dirt we haul away, and the finish on top: broom, color, stamped border, exposed aggregate.
One thing we refuse to do is float a slab over soft, uncompressed fill to save a morning. That patio cracks along the low side inside a year, and sealing a concrete patio afterward hides nothing.
Keep reading for how we build one, when a patio is the wrong answer, and the questions that come up first. Call and we will walk the yard with you.
Concrete Fire Pit
Poured in with the rest of the slab, a concrete fire pit beats the steel bowl you roll out of a garden center, because you build it once instead of replacing a rusted-through ring every few summers. Most of the ones our concrete contractors company sets go in during the patio pour, so the footing under the pit is part of the same slab and nothing settles away from anything else.
The part that gets skipped is the liner. Fire brick or a steel ring inside the wall, with an air gap behind it, because concrete holds moisture and moisture turns to steam at wood-fire temperature. Pour plain concrete straight around the flame and you'll be picking flakes off the inside wall by the second season, and the outside face starts spalling after that.
We leave vent openings at the base too, and if you want gas, the line gets trenched and sleeved before anybody floats the cement patio.
Diameter, the veneer you pick, how wide you want the seat cap, and whether there's a gas run all push the concrete patio installation cost around. Building the pit into a new concrete patio runs easier than saw-cutting one into a finished slab two years later.
Concrete Patio Resurfacing
Concrete patio resurfacing is what we do when the slab under your feet is still solid and only the top has gone bad: flaking surface, stains that no longer wash out, a color somewhere between dishwater and dust. We grind or shot blast the old surface open, wash it, cut out and patch the spalled spots, route the cracks that are still moving, then bond a polymer-modified overlay over the top and finish it broomed, troweled or stamped.
Skip the grinding and the overlay comes off in sheets a season later. Some patio companies will jet wash it and trowel straight over, which is lipstick on a pig, and every crack you paid to hide will print through the new top by the second summer. I refuse to feather patch material over a crack with a crumbling edge under it. That lets go and takes a chunk of slab with it.
What moves the cost is square footage, how much patching the old surface needs, the finish you pick, and how the truck and mixer get to the back yard. Heat matters too. On a 105 degree day the overlay stiffens under the trowel fast, so we damp the slab, work smaller panels and shade what we can.
What the job involves
A concrete patio starts with a shovel, not a mixer. We snap out the shape, dig the sod and dirt down four or five inches, set forms and stakes to the grade we want, then bring in crushed rock and run a plate tamper over it until it quits moving underfoot.
Steel goes in next, mesh or half inch bar up on chairs, and we pull the slope away from the house so sprinkler overspray and the hard rain we do get run off to the lawn instead of pooling at your slider.
Pour day is an early one. Once it gets into the high nineties the mud stiffens fast, which is why you see concrete patio contractors around here placing at first light and finishing ahead of the sun. Screed, bull float, let the bleed water leave the surface before anybody touches it, then broom or trowel the finish you picked.
Joints get cut that day or the next morning, because concrete patio slabs crack whether you planned for it or not, and the joints are how you choose where.
Size, how much dirt leaves the yard, truck reach versus wheelbarrows through a side gate, thickness, finish, and footings if you want a concrete patio with fire pit set in it: those swing the number.
What it costs
What a concrete patio costs comes down to a handful of things I can size up in ten minutes standing in your backyard. Square footage first, obviously. Then thickness, whether there's an old slab or a brick pad I have to pull up and cart off, how close the truck can park to the pour, and what you want the surface to look like when it's cured. A plain broom finish sits at one end.
Stamped, colored, or exposed aggregate sits at the other, because that's more material and more hours on hands and knees.
A concrete patio with fire pit adds a footing under the pit that runs deeper than the slab around it, and that shows up on the sheet.
The cheap number some concrete patio installers land on usually gets there by pouring thin, leaving out the wire, and setting it on dirt nobody packed down. That slab cracks in a crooked line across the middle within a couple of summers, and no patch ever stops looking like a patch.
Call me with rough dimensions and I'll work out a real figure for your yard.
Midsummer pours run heavier on labor too. When it's over a hundred, concrete goes off fast and I need more hands on the slab to finish it in time.
When concrete patio is the wrong fix
Sometimes a concrete patio is the wrong answer, and I would rather tell you that in your back yard than after the forms are pinned down. If your ground drops away toward the back of the lot, a fresh pour on the high side just hands the soil something heavy to shove. That grade has to be held first, and a concrete retaining wall is the job you actually need.
If what you already have is a sound concrete slab that has only gone dull, stained, or spidered with hairlines, tearing it out is paying to send good concrete to the dump. Sound cracks get a proper concrete repair, then concrete resurfacing puts a new surface over the top. Some concrete patio installers will push the demolition because it is the bigger ticket, and demolition and haul-off is the part of any quote that swells fastest.
Wrapping a pool? That is a concrete pool deck, and it wants a textured finish and fall away from the coping, not the slick steel-trowel look people ask for under a dining table.
And if the real dream is cooking out there, the concrete countertops outdoor kitchen side of it gets cast and ground separately, on its own schedule.
Why choose us for this
You want a concrete patio out back, and mostly you want to hire it once, have it poured, and never think about it again except when you are sitting on it. Not to supervise anybody. Not to find out on invoice day that the number you got over the phone was the number before the old slab, the narrow gate and the color were added to it.
So we price the whole thing up front: how big the pour is, how the truck and the mud get to the back, how much old concrete leaves with us, how thick it goes, and whether you want a plain broom finish or a stamped concrete patio with color and a sealer on top. Those are the things that move it, and none of them should be a surprise later.
We have been pouring slabs around Visalia for the best part of 12 years. One thing you will not get from us is a stamped patio handed over with release powder still sitting in the joints and no sealer on it. Unsealed color chalks out fast in our summers, and then you are looking at a patchy patio in year two.
The estimate costs nothing and booking is not part of it. If concrete countertops for an outdoor kitchen are in the plan, we form those on the same visit.
Frequently asked questions
How long before I can use a new concrete patio?
Two days for foot traffic. We strip the forms the day after the pour, and the slab keeps gaining strength for weeks, so keep the table legs, planters and anything with sharp feet off it for about a week. Poured on a 100 degree afternoon, the top needs water or a cure coat, or it dries ahead of the slab and crazes.
Is a stamped concrete patio slippery when it gets wet?
Not with grit in the sealer. A stamp pattern carries more texture than a broom finish, but a straight gloss sealer over the top turns slick the first morning the fog sits in. We broadcast a fine non-skid additive into the last coat, which matters most on steps and anywhere the patio meets a pool deck.
Can you go over my old slab instead of breaking it out?
Sometimes. If the slab underneath is sound and only the top has gone to pieces, concrete patio resurfacing saves you the demo and the hauling. If it rocks underfoot, sits low at one end, or is cracked clean through, an overlay just mirrors that crack back up through the new surface within a season or two.
Contact Visalia Concrete Contractors now
If you're weighing up who to call, we're the Visalia concrete contractors who'd rather come look at the yard than guess over the phone. Before you dial, pace off the space so you've got rough dimensions, and take a look at your gate opening. If a mixer can't get a chute to the pour, we're moving the mud by hand and the day runs longer.
Tell me what's going on that slab too. A dining table and a grill is one build. A hot tub is another, because that's a thicker pour with steel in it and it gets formed differently from the start.
When we come out we pull a tape, check which way water runs off the house, and figure out whether your backyard concrete patio wants one pour or two with a joint where it belongs. If you've already got good concrete back there and you're really after sealing a concrete patio that's gone chalky, say that on the phone and I'll bring the right stuff to test it.
We're here weekdays, nine to five. Leave a message and it comes back to me, not a call center. We're licensed, bonded and insured, and I'll show you the certificate if you want to see it.