Eight miles up the road from the shop
We load out in Woodlawn, just outside town. For us a Hillsville job is a short drive, not a haul. The trucks load, the crew rolls, and we are on the lot with forms checked and tools ready before the first ready-mix truck turns in. Nobody burns half the morning getting to you. That is one less thing working against a good pour, and it shows up in the finish.
Being close changes the schedule more than anything else. Hillsville is the Carroll County seat and the crossroads for this end of the county, so we are through town most days on the way somewhere. If you want us to look at a set of forms, or check the grade before you order concrete, we can usually work it in without pushing your pour date back.
It also means we are easy to get back out to. Concrete work does not end when the truck pulls off. If you have a question a week later about how it is curing, or you want us to look at something the next spring, we are eight miles away instead of two counties over. We work where we live, and that is a good part of the reason we do it the way we do.
The work we pour most around Hillsville
Most of what we pour here is the plain concrete a place needs in order to work right. Driveways and turnarounds that tie into a gravel lane. Garage floors and shop slabs. Porches, walks and steps up to the front door. Footers and poured walls for a new build or an addition. Pads out past the house for equipment or a building. It is not fancy work, but it is the work that gets used every single day.
Farm concrete is a steady part of the calendar. Feed pads, equipment slabs, floors in a pole building, an apron in front of a shop door. That kind of concrete lives hard, so we build the base for it, form it heavier where the load calls for it, and pitch it so water runs off instead of standing on the surface. We spec strength to the job, commonly a 4,000 PSI air-entrained mix built for Virginia freeze-thaw.
We also tear out and replace. A fair amount of what we do in and around town is old concrete that has heaved, cracked through the middle or dropped at one corner. We break it out, haul it off, fix whatever was going on underneath it, and pour it back on a base that will hold. The same crew forms it, pumps it, places it and finishes it, so nothing gets lost between one outfit and the next.
- Driveways, aprons and turnarounds, including where a poured drive meets a gravel lane
- Garage slabs, shop floors and pole building floors
- Footers, poured walls, slabs and foundations for new builds and additions
- Porches, sidewalks, steps and walkways
- Patios and stamped or decorative work
- Farm and equipment pads, feed pads and barn aprons
- Tear-out and replacement of concrete that has failed
Carroll County ground and Carroll County winters
The dirt here has a mind of its own. Red clay holds water, swells when it is wet and shrinks back when it dries out, and it will move a slab that was set straight on top of it. So the part of the job you never see is the part we care about most. We get the subgrade cut and compacted, we bring in stone where the ground needs help, and we make sure water has somewhere to go before a single yard of concrete is ordered.
Winter is the other half of it. Up here the freeze-thaw cycle runs all season, and concrete that was not built for it will scale, spall and craze at the surface. Air entrainment is what buys the slab room to take that cycle year after year, so a 4,000 PSI air-entrained mix is our normal call on exterior flatwork. We cut control joints where the slab wants to crack anyway, and we give it the time and the conditions it needs to gain strength.
Gravel lanes are common in this county, and the spot where a gravel drive meets poured concrete is where a lot of trouble starts. Water follows the low side, washes the gravel out at the joint, and undercuts the edge until it breaks off. We plan for that with the grade, the thickness at the edge and where the water is headed once it leaves your concrete.
Sloped lots, tight backyards and where the pump earns its keep
Very little around here is flat and open. Building sites get cut into a bank, houses sit above or below the road, and the backyard is fenced with one gate on the far side. A ready-mix truck is heavy and it needs solid ground and a straight shot at the forms. On a good many Hillsville lots it has neither one.
That is what our pump is for. It is our own trailer-mounted line pump, run by an operator with a hose guy working the end of the line. It is not a boom. Other companies bring a boom pump, and there are jobs that call for one, but a boom often has to set up out at the road and reach in. Our trailer pump follows the crew up a gravel drive, and we snake 2.5 inch and 3 inch hose through a gate, around the house, down a bank or into a basement. The concrete goes where it belongs instead of getting hauled by wheelbarrow across your yard.
A pump usually makes sense when the pour is a foundation, when it is roughly eight cubic yards or more, or when the truck simply cannot get close enough to reach the forms. Most crews rent a pump when a job needs one. We own ours, so on our own pours the pumping is built into one price and the pump shows up when we say it will. When another contractor needs concrete moved, we are not handing over the machine. We bring our pump and our operator and do the pumping on your pour.
- Basement floors and garage slabs with no straight shot for a chute
- Backyard patios and slabs sitting behind a fence or the house
- Long or steep gravel lanes a loaded truck has no business on
- Footers and foundation walls on cut and fill lots
- Barn and equipment pads out past the yard
Houses, shops and commercial jobs in town
We work both sides of it. Residential is driveways, patios, garage slabs, porches, walks and foundations for the homes around Hillsville and out through the county. Commercial is flatwork, sidewalks and steps, shop and warehouse slabs, pads and footers for businesses in town and along the highway.
The difference is mostly scale and scheduling, not standard. A commercial pour usually means more yardage in a day, a tighter window and more coordination with whoever else is on site, so we plan the sequence, the access and the pump setup ahead of time and get there early. A driveway at a house on a side street gets formed and finished by the same people who do that.
Either way you deal with our own crew. We form it, we pump it, we place it and we finish it. There is nobody to point at if something needs to be made right, and there is a workmanship warranty in writing, with the exact terms confirmed on your written estimate.
Getting on the schedule
Concrete runs on its own clock. Once the ready-mix trucks roll, the pour is happening, so the day gets planned backward from that. We want the base right, the forms set and the access sorted before anybody calls in the load. On a Hillsville job that planning is easier, because we can stop by and look at the site without giving up a half day to the drive.
Spring and fall fill up fastest around here. If you know you want concrete this year, call early and get on the list. Weather still gets a vote. We pour through the cold months, but a cold weather pour gets planned rather than squeezed in, and if the forecast is going to hurt the finished product we will tell you straight and move the date instead of handing you a slab that scales its first spring.
On pour day we need a clear path to the work and a place to wash out. If the pump is coming, we will tell you ahead of time where the trailer and the hose need to run. None of that is complicated, and we go over it on the estimate visit so there are no surprises the morning of.
Free written estimate, usually within a day or two
Estimates are free and they are done in person. We come out to your place in Hillsville, walk the site, measure it, look at the grade and the access, and talk through the options that actually apply to your job. Then you get a clear written quote, usually within a day or two of the visit.
If you just want a rough number to know whether the project is worth chasing, call and we will talk it through on the phone. We are happy to give you a ballpark. We will not pretend it is a price, because the ground, the size, the thickness and how we get concrete to the forms all move the number, and none of that is knowable from the driveway of a phone call. We measure on site.
Call 276-733-3750 or use the quote form on our homepage. Tell us where you are and roughly what you are after, and we will set a time to come look at it. If you are outside Hillsville, we still cover about an hour to an hour and a half from Woodlawn, across Carroll, Grayson, Wythe, Pulaski, Montgomery and Floyd counties, up into the New River and Roanoke valleys and across the North Carolina line into Mount Airy and Surry County. Not sure if you are in range? Call to confirm your address.