Concrete cutting in Tacoma WA - clean straight cuts and no mess left behind

Most calls start with something specific, like a cracked driveway panel that has to come out, a trench for a drain line through a garage floor or a new opening in a wall. The price moves with how thick the slab is and whether there's steel in it, how many feet we're cutting, how easy the spot is to reach and whether the pieces leave with us. The schedule mostly turns on whether the slab needs a scan before we cut and whether the work reaches the sidewalk or the street. You'll get your own figure in a written estimate you can take your time with.

I start by walking the cut with you and asking what you know about the slab, because a thin garden walk and a structural slab with steel in it are very different cuts. I tell you up front whether hauling out the cut pieces is part of the price, so nobody's guessing about what's left in your yard. On structural slabs we plan time for a scan before the saw comes out. That way we know where the rebar, the steel bars that give a slab its strength, and any tensioned cables, conduit or pipes sit before the blade finds them. Then we cut wet, and before we leave we clean up the slurry, the gray paste of water and concrete dust the saw throws off.

Cutting is often the first half of a bigger job. When a cracked or sunken section comes out, the replacement goes in as concrete driveway building. When you want an old back slab trimmed, opened up for a drain or squared off, it usually leads into concrete patio construction. Either way, I'd rather put your money into a dug-out, packed base under the new concrete than into a fancier top. The base is hidden on day one, but it's what keeps the new section from settling the way the old one did.

Does your cut reach the sidewalk, the curb or the end of your driveway at the street? If so, that part usually sits in the public right-of-way. Tacoma issues right-of-way construction permits for smaller jobs there, and its list names repair or replacement of sidewalk, curb, gutter and driveways but not concrete cutting by itself. That means whether your cut needs one isn't settled until we know the whole job, and Tacoma Permits is the office to ask. Most of those permits go only to applicants who meet the city's bonding requirements, though in some cases the city can issue them to property owners without that step. Work there also has to follow the city's design rules for the public right-of-way. Before work starts I check which office covers your address and what it'll want to see. When a job calls for a permit, we handle the paperwork, and if it's one you have to get yourself, I tell you what to bring.

We're based in Tacoma and work in the cities around it in Pierce County and south King County. A lot of the cutting we do around here is on older driveways and walks where one panel has cracked or settled and the rest are still sound, so cutting out that one section usually makes more sense than tearing out the whole slab. We get the same calls on jobs in Lakewood and University Place. On sloped lots I look at where the water and slurry will run before we set up the saw.