Concrete driveway building in Hayward CA - a slab built for what you park on it

Most people who call Precision Hayward Concrete about a driveway have an old one that's cracked, sunk or holding water, or a house that never had a proper one. We're based in Hayward and work in the cities around it across the East Bay and over on the Peninsula. The price mostly comes down to a few things: how big the driveway is, how thick it has to be and what steel goes in for the vehicles you park, whether there's an old slab to tear out and haul away, how much digging the base needs, and the finish you pick. The schedule turns on the tear-out, any permit for work at the street, the weather on pour day and the days the concrete needs to cure before you drive on it. The estimate I write up after seeing your driveway puts your own figure on all of that.

I start by asking what you'll park on it, a couple of sedans, a work truck or a camper, because that decides how we build the slab and what steel goes inside. Then we lay it out with you, where it meets the garage, where it meets the street and how wide it runs, before anything gets poured. Our crew digs down to firm ground and packs the subgrade, the layer the slab rests on, so the new driveway isn't sitting on loose dirt that was only raked level. We set the forms so the slab falls away from the house and water runs off, lay in the steel, and pour early in the day, since concrete that bakes in midday heat can end up with a weak, dusty top. We give it a broom finish, a light brushed texture that gives tires and shoes grip when it's wet, and cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a straight place to crack instead of a spot it picks for itself, while the concrete is still fresh. If the budget's tight, I'd rather we spend it on the base than on a fancy surface, because a surface can be redone someday but nobody gets back under a slab that's already sinking.

A driveway is often the first piece of a bigger plan. If you want somewhere to sit out back, we can plan concrete patio construction alongside the driveway so the two match, and if you'd like the driveway to look like stone or brick, our stamped concrete services press a pattern and color into the surface while it's still wet.

Hayward has a say in how big your driveway can be. The city caps your driveway and any other paving, combined, at half of the required front yard area, and a driveway in front of a two-car garage has to be 20 feet wide. So when we lay out a wider or longer driveway with you, we fit it inside that share. Any work in the public right-of-way, which includes the street and the sidewalk, needs an encroachment permit from the city, so if your new driveway ties into the curb or crosses the sidewalk, that permit is part of the job. When a permit's needed, we handle the paperwork and inspections with you and work with the city office that covers your address.

A lot of the driveways we tear out here are older slabs, often cracked straight across where no joint was ever cut, or tipped back toward the garage. We see the same thing on jobs in Castro Valley and San Leandro, and the fix is the same: dig out, rebuild the base and pour it to fall toward the street.