Hamilton Concrete Contractors: Driveways, Foundations, Patios & Slabs

The concrete driveways we pour in Hamilton come in plain, broom, coloured or exposed aggregate, over a base compacted in layers with the falls set so water runs away from the house. What sits on it decides the build. A driveway carrying cars and utes is a different slab to one taking a truck or a horse float, so tell us at the visit what is going to live there.

We pour house foundations to the engineer design under new builds, extensions and sleepouts. On good ground that means 100 mm of slab, 20 MPa concrete and Grade 500E mesh at 2.27 kg per square metre. Plenty of Hamilton ground is not good ground, and the design changes before the price does. Tell us at the visit if a hoist or heavy racking is going in.

Retaining walls we build in reinforced concrete hold a bank back where a site has to be levelled before anything else can go in. The Schedule 1 exemption only holds for a wall under 1.5 metres deep carrying no surcharge, sitting more than a metre off the boundary and supporting no building. Put a driveway, shed or pool above it and the exemption is gone.

Garage pads, shed floors, sleepouts and kitset buildings each sit on their own slab, and the specification comes off what goes on top of it. A garage floor takes point loads from a jack and turning loads from tyres. A kitset shed arrives with a slab plan giving exact dimensions and bolt positions, and a pad 40 mm out is a pad that gets broken up.

Patios, courtyards and outdoor living areas take furniture, foot traffic and a Waikato winter, so the finish decides more than the thickness does. We lay them in broom, coloured or exposed, with control joints cut while the slab is young and falls set so water runs off and away from the door. A patio raising the ground against the house also has a cladding clearance to meet.

Footpaths, side access, garden paths and steps are the smallest work we take on and the most often poured alongside something bigger. Width and fall are the two decisions that matter. Where a path runs beside the house, its finished height is governed by the clearance the cladding needs above paving, so the level gets set before the boxing goes in.

The decorative finishes we lay decide how a driveway looks for the next twenty years. Exposed aggregate is washed back to reveal the stone in the mix. Coloured concrete carries oxide right through the mix, so it will not flake off the surface the way a topical stain can. Stamped work takes its pattern from a mat pressed into the slab before it sets, and the sealer goes on once the concrete has cured.

Warehouse and factory floors, hardstand, yards and carparks are the commercial and industrial work we take on, poured in bays so a site can keep trading around us. Floors get built to a published surface regularity class, because a slab under 13 metre racking answers to a far tighter tolerance than a workshop floor. Loading, joint layout and staging decide the scope, so we walk it before we price it.

Feed pads, silage bunkers, dairy yards, calf sheds, wool sheds and farm hardstand are the rural work we pour across the Waikato and Waipa districts. Effluent and silage liquor attack concrete harder than traffic does, so falls, joint sealant and cover over the steel carry more weight in the design than the surface finish. Stock and machinery both use these surfaces, so grip matters as much as strength.

Not every cracked slab needs replacing, and we say so before you spend anything. Hairline and stable cracks get stitched and filled, spalled edges get cut back and rebuilt, and sunken panels can sometimes be lifted. What decides it is whether the ground underneath has moved, because concrete sitting on ground that is still going will crack again wherever you patch it.

Where the base is sound and only the top has gone, an overlay goes over the existing slab for a fraction of the cost of a new one. Preparation is what you are paying for, since the surface is ground, profiled and cleaned before anything is laid. Existing control joints carry through to the new surface, because the slab underneath keeps moving at those joints whatever goes on top of it.

When a slab is past saving, replacement means breaking out the old concrete, carting it away and rebuilding the base before anything is poured. That break-out and cartage is a real line on the quote, and it is the part people forget when they compare prices. The upside is that you get to fix what went wrong underneath, which a repair or an overlay can never do.