Riverside Concrete Pro replaces garage slabs at 4 to 5 inches over a vapor barrier, with joints on a 12-foot grid and a sealer that keeps oil on the surface where a rag can lift it.
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Floors under the roll-up door
A garage floor is judged on three things a driveway never is: whether it dusts, whether it stains, and whether anything stored on it stays dry underneath. All three are decided before the concrete arrives. Sheet plastic under the slab stops ground moisture rising through it, a mix placed stiff rather than watered down at the chute keeps the surface hard, and the trowel work waits until the bleed water has gone.
Riverside Concrete Pro was founded in 2021 by Marco Delgado, who spent 15 years on Inland Empire flatwork crews first, and he is on the floor for the finish. Riverside garages come in two eras: detached single-car buildings on the older grid west of Brockton Avenue, and attached two and three-car bays on the tracts out toward Orangecrest and Mission Grove.
Floors go in under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job. Whether a slab inside your own walls needs a permit is a counter question, and a garage being turned into living space is not: that floor is structural, and is drawn, permitted and inspected through Building and Safety at the City of Riverside. The work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Warning signs
A floor that powders under a broom was over-troweled while bleed water still sat on it, which leaves a weak skin over sound concrete. The dust returns a week after every sweep, coats tool chests and boxes and walks into the house on shoe soles. Grinding it off costs slab thickness.
Bare concrete is porous, and an unsealed bay takes in whatever drips off a car until the marks sit inside the slab rather than on it. Brake fluid and gear oil reach deepest and never come back out. Once a floor is stained through, no coating will bond to it and no wash will lift it.
A slab that rocks or clicks when a wheel crosses it has voids beneath. Detached garages on the older streets here were poured straight onto graded dirt with no base, so the ground settles unevenly for decades and the slab finally breaks over a low spot. Nothing laid on it lasts.
A bay that takes water off the apron every winter has lost the fall at the threshold, usually because the drive outside was rebuilt higher than the floor inside. Storm water then sits along the front of the slab and works into the bottom plate of the wall behind it.
What is included
Standard on every bay we pour, with nothing sold on top. Each item answers something an enclosed floor has to deal with that outdoor flatwork does not: moisture coming up from below, fluid coming down from above, and no sunlight to dry either.
The slab is broken out inside the walls, cut clear of the footing, and carried out by hand rather than machine so the frame is untouched.
Four inches of Class 2 base plate-compacted level across the bay, which is what most detached garages on the older streets never had underneath.
Sheet polyethylene lapped and taped over the base, so ground moisture cannot rise through the slab and lift a coating off it later.
4 inches for cars, 5 inches where a work truck, a hoist or a lift parks, in 3,500 psi ready-mix with fiber through the load.
Panels cut close to square at about 12 feet, so a two-car bay is jointed once each way and the shrinkage lands where you can see it coming.
The surface is closed with a power trowel once the bleed water has left it, which is the step that decides whether a floor dusts for 30 years.
A penetrating sealer goes on the cured slab so oil and brake fluid stay on top long enough to be wiped rather than absorbed.
The front edge is poured to meet the apron with fall to the outside, and the roll-up door track and seal are re-set against the new level.
Your options
Four ways to finish a bay, judged on how long each holds up under tires, what it suits, what it asks of you and how long the garage is out of use. All four go over the same troweled slab, because that is the half that decides the rest.
| Option | Wear life | Best for | Upkeep | Bay out of use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sealed troweled slab | 30 years or more | Parking, storage and a workbench | Reseal every 3 to 4 years | 1 day, then 7 to cure |
| Epoxy coating | 10 to 15 years | Bays used as a workshop or showroom | Patch hot-tire marks as they appear | 1 day, plus 3 to coat |
| Polished and densified | 25 to 30 years | Converted bays with no car on them | Damp mop, burnish every few years | 2 days, plus 7 to cure |
| Interlocking floor tiles | 10 to 20 years | A sound old slab you would rather keep | Lift and rinse under them yearly | Half a day, no curing |
A coating is only as good as what it grips: epoxy laid on a slab with no vapor barrier under it lifts in sheets within a couple of summers.
Local knowledge
Two things set a garage apart from every other slab on the property: nothing above it dries it out, and everything spilled on it stays there until somebody deals with it.
West of Brockton Avenue, on the grid laid out around the citrus era, the garage is usually a detached building at the end of the drive and its floor was poured straight onto graded dirt. There is no base, no barrier and often no reinforcement, which is why those bays dust, stain and settle in a way the 1990s attached bays out in Orangecrest do not. The tear-out on one of them tells us more than any measurement does.
The second half is heat and ultraviolet, which reach a floor through an open door for hours a day this far inland. That is hard on a coating and hard on a sealer, so we cure the slab damp for the full seven days before anything goes over it and set the reseal interval on how the bay is actually used. A car parked in daily is a different floor from one that stores boxes.
Our process
From the morning the bay is measured to the day the car goes back in. One crew, one written figure, and the emptying and the door set out on the estimate rather than sprung on you.
Marco Delgado measures the floor, checks the level against the apron and drills a core to see what the old slab was poured onto.
You pick the thickness for what parks in there and the finish that goes over it. A conversion is drawn and permitted before anything starts.
The bay is emptied, the old floor saw-cut clear of the footing and broken out by hand, and the debris carried out and hauled the same day.
Base compacted level, the vapor barrier lapped over it, then the concrete placed, screeded and closed with a power trowel by the owner.
Joints cut within 12 hours, the slab kept damp a week, then sealed. You walk the bay with the owner and take the written guarantee.
What moves the estimate
Floor area sets the floor of the number and the tear-out sets the rest. A single bay runs about 240 square feet and a three-car about 700; what moves it after that is what the old slab sits on and what has to come out before a wheelbarrow can get in.
A floor on graded dirt means base and a barrier going in that were never there. One on sound base is a straight replacement at the same level.
Broken concrete leaves an enclosed bay by hand and by barrow, through one door. A detached garage on a long drive is more of the day than the pour.
4 inches under cars, 5 inches under a work truck or a two-post lift, which also needs its own thickened pads under the posts.
A sealer is the baseline. Epoxy and polishing are separate visits after the seven days, and a conversion floor adds the permit and the inspection.
Nothing is figured from a photograph of a floor. The visit is free, the figure is written in the bay, and we call back within 1 business day to book it. (951) 584-0685 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and someone rings you back within 1 business day to fix a time. We measure the bay, core the old slab to see what is under it and write the figure there, and nothing is owed if you leave it.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google, Facebook and the BBB by homeowners whose bays we re-poured. All three are about garage floors rather than about drives or back-garden slabs.
“Our detached garage off Brockton had a floor laid on bare dirt and it powdered no matter how often I swept it. They took it out, put base and plastic down and poured 4 inches. Nine months of storing bikes and boxes in there and there is not a speck of dust on any of it.”
“I keep a service van and a two-post lift in the bay so they went 5 inches and put pads under the lift posts. Marco cored the old floor on the estimate visit so we knew what we were dealing with before I signed. Cut the joints the same afternoon and it has stayed flat.”
“We turned the garage into an ADU, so the floor had to be engineered and inspected. Riverside Concrete Pro did the drawings, filed it and met the inspector before the pour. The barrier went down properly and the flooring guy said it was the driest slab he had put anything down on all year.”
FAQ
Thickness, dusting, sealing, vapor barriers, conversions and the guarantee, answered for a Riverside garage rather than for concrete in general.
4 inches under cars and 5 inches where a work truck, a trailer or a two-post lift lives, with thickened pads under the lift posts. The extra inch is the cheapest insurance on the job, because a floor cracked under a load it was never poured for cannot be brought back by anything laid over it. What we pour is written on the estimate you sign.
Because the top of it was closed with the trowel while bleed water was still on the surface, which leaves a soft skin over otherwise sound concrete. It powders under tires and brooms and it does not stop on its own. Sealing slows it, grinding removes it and costs the slab some thickness, and on a floor already thin or stained the honest answer is a new pour.
For a slab that stays a garage we ask at the counter, because the city's exempt list covers floor finishes rather than a new concrete floor. Converting the bay to living space is a different job: that floor is structural, it needs a vapor barrier and an engineered design, and it is drawn, permitted and inspected through Building and Safety at the City of Riverside. We file it and meet the inspector.
It is a 10-mil polyethylene sheet lapped and taped over the base, under the concrete, and yes. Ground moisture moves up through a slab constantly, and in an enclosed bay it has nowhere to go but into whatever is stored on the floor or under a coating, which then lifts in sheets. Older detached garages here have none, which is why so many epoxy jobs on them fail.
Yes, once it has cured, and again every 3 to 4 years. A penetrating sealer fills the pores so a drip sits on the surface long enough to be wiped up instead of drawn in, and it is the only thing standing between a new floor and permanent marks under the engine bay. Reseal sooner where a car is parked in daily and the door stands open in summer.
Not over a slab that dusts, is stained through or has settled, because a bonded topping is only as sound as what it grips and the crack below comes up through it. It also raises the floor, which throws the level at the roll-up door and the threshold to the drive. Where the old slab is genuinely sound, a grind and a coating is the cheaper answer and we will say so.
Foot traffic after 24 to 48 hours, boxes and shelving at seven days, and a car at 28 days once the concrete has reached full strength. Hot tires are what a green slab likes least: they pull at a surface that has not finished hardening and leave marks that stay. The sealer goes on toward the end of that window and we give you the date at the pour.
On a grid of about 12 feet, in panels as close to square as the bay allows, cut within 12 hours of the pour. A standard two-car garage takes one cut each way, which lands the shrinkage in four straight lines instead of one wandering crack. On a floor being coated the joints are filled with a flexible sealant first so the pattern does not print through.
Service area
The eight nearest towns we re-pour garage floors in, with the straight-line distance from Riverside beside each. Coverage runs to 20 towns inside 25 miles.
Four jobs measured on the same visit as a garage floor, or that follow on from one, the drive outside the door, the slab under the rest of the house, and the saw work between them.
The apron the bay opens onto, poured to meet the new floor at one level.
A full house or ADU slab, on the same base and barrier as a garage floor.
Interior floors in a shop, a studio or a converted bay, troweled and sealed.
Saw work for a doorway, a trench or a drain line cut through an existing slab.
Call or send the form and someone rings you back within 1 business day. We come out, core the old floor to see what it was poured on and leave the written figure with you, with nothing to pay if you go no further.