Concrete patio construction in Kirkland WA - a patio that drains away from your house

Most people who call us have a cracked or sunken old patio, a muddy spot off the back door or a slab that tips water toward the house, and they want something that stays flat. The price mostly turns on the size, how much digging and base work your ground needs, whether an old slab has to come out, how easily a truck can reach the back yard and the finish, since a plain broom texture costs less than a decorative finish. The schedule turns on our calendar, the weather around pour day and whether the city needs to sign off first, and I'll give you your own figure after I've looked at the site.

I start by standing in the yard with you and setting the slope together, so you know where water off the patio will end up, and then we talk finish, because a plain broom texture and a decorative look take different skill. Our crew digs out to firm ground and packs the subgrade, the soil and base the slab sits on, evenly and sloped, with no soft or wet spots, since a base that's only raked level settles and takes the slab down with it. We set the forms and add mesh or rebar, the steel that helps hold a slab together, where the job calls for it, and all of that is done before the truck arrives, because waiting around once the concrete is there makes a weaker slab. Then we pour, float it smooth, brush in a broom finish so it has grip, and cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a straight place to crack instead of a random one. If the budget gets tight, the base is the last thing I'll cut, because nobody sees it on day one and everybody sees it when the patio starts to sink.

A patio is flatwork, our word for any slab laid flat on the ground, so it often comes with other pieces of the same kind. If you'd like color or a pattern, our stamped concrete services cover that, and if you need a way to get to the new patio, we handle concrete sidewalk building too.

Kirkland has a few rules worth checking before we dig. The city's permits cover removing or bringing in more than 50 cubic yards of soil or fill, or changing drainage, and its list of exempt work names sidewalks, decks and driveways but not patios, so ask the city about your own project. Those exemptions also stop at flood hazard, wetland, steep slope, shoreline and other critical areas, and a Parcel Report from the city's Property Search Tool shows whether your lot sits in one. Even with no building permit, the patio still has to meet setbacks from property lines and limits on how much of the lot is covered, and the city's planning staff at 425-587-3600 can confirm which apply. If the patio is part of a bigger project that already has a city permit, 500 square feet or more of new or replaced hard surface brings a drainage review. We work inside city limits and out in the county areas too, and when a job needs a permit, I'll tell you at the estimate and then either take care of the application or walk you through it, so you know where it stands.

A lot of the back yards we work in are tight and sit on a grade, with the house close by, so getting the fall of the slab away from the foundation matters more than squeezing out an extra foot of patio. We see the same kind of yards on jobs in Bellevue and Redmond, and we handle them the same way, by setting the slope first and planning how the concrete gets to the back before pour day.