Concrete contractor in San Ramon, CA - driveways and patios built for shifting soil

Building permits in San Ramon come from the city's Building & Safety office. The city keeps a list of home improvements that need no permit, but an exemption doesn't excuse work that breaks the code, and an addition may need Planning approval before a building permit is issued. When we do the work, we confirm which office covers your address first, and if a permit is needed we handle the application and the inspections and keep you posted.

San Ramon requires a building permit for a shed or other accessory building over 120 square feet. One of 120 square feet or less needs no building permit, as long as no electrical or plumbing work is planned. Those figures are about the building, so we check with Building & Safety on the slab under it before we pour.

A retaining wall up to 4 feet tall needs no permit in San Ramon, measured from the bottom of its footing to the top of the wall. That exemption ends if the wall holds back extra weight, which a cut into a hillside creates, or if it sits in an engineered grading area such as Dougherty Valley. Plenty of hillside walls here fall outside the exemption, so we sort that out before we quote the wall.

A contractor needs a state license when the project needs a building permit, uses any additional workers, or costs $1,000 or more in labor and materials, according to the California Contractors State License Board. The board lists a job as possibly exempt only when no permit is needed, no employees work on it, and labor and materials together come to less than $1,000. Ask anyone you're hiring for concrete work about their license, and know that we're licensed and fully insured.

There's no flat price, because a San Ramon driveway's cost turns on what's under the old slab as much as the new one. Size and thickness set the concrete cost, while hauling out old concrete, digging out soft clay, adding rebar, a steep or narrow site, and a stamped or colored finish all add to it. I measure on site and write the estimate line by line, so you can see which choices move the number.

Concrete shrinks as it cures and moves with the ground under it, so no slab stays free of every crack, and I'd rather tell you that up front. What we control is where cracks go and how much they matter, so we cut control joints, straight grooves that give the slab a planned place to crack, and we cut them on time. Add the packed base and rebar, steel that keeps cracked pieces from drifting apart, plus early pours on hot days so the top doesn't dry too fast and turn weak and dusty.