Concrete Patios
Broom-finish, stamped, and stained concrete patios and extensions, with structural footers where covers come later.
A concrete patio is a poured, reinforced slab that gives you a single continuous surface underfoot. It is the most economical way to add usable outdoor floor, and with the right finish it is far from plain: a broom finish for grip and simplicity, a stamped pattern that mimics stone or plank, or an integral stain that adds color through the slab. What makes a concrete patio last is not the surface but the work below it, the base, the reinforcement, and the joints that tell the slab where to crack.
We pour patios and slab extensions on a properly prepared and compacted base, reinforced and jointed for our soils, and finished the way you want them. Where a patio cover, pergola, or outdoor kitchen is coming later, we set structural footers in the pour so those posts and islands have something engineered to bear on rather than a thin slab that was never meant to carry them. Planning the loads before the concrete goes down is far cheaper than cutting into a finished patio to add support after the fact.
How we pour a slab that lasts
A durable concrete patio starts below grade. We prepare and compact the base so the slab bears evenly, place reinforcement, steel or fiber depending on the design, and set the thickness to the use, whether it is a simple sitting patio or a slab that will carry a cover and a kitchen. The concrete is then poured, finished, and cut with control joints at planned intervals.
Those control joints are the part homeowners overlook and the part that matters most. Concrete moves and will crack; joints simply decide where, guiding the inevitable cracking to straight, tooled lines instead of letting it wander across the field. A slab poured without adequate joints, reinforcement, or base is the one that develops the ugly random cracks people associate with concrete. Done properly, the cracking is controlled and largely invisible.
Concrete and Central Texas clay
Our expansive clay is the hardest thing on a concrete slab. It swells with moisture and shrinks in drought, and that movement puts constant stress on anything rigid poured over it. We build against it with a compacted base, proper reinforcement, adequate slab thickness, and control joints, all sized to the conditions, so the slab moves as a unit and cracks only where we tell it to. No slab in this soil is guaranteed crack-free, but a well-built one cracks predictably and stays sound.
Drainage decides how bad that movement gets. Water pooling against or under a slab keeps the clay beneath it swelling and shrinking unevenly, which is what drives heaving and stepped cracks. We slope patios to drain away from the house and keep water moving off the surface, because managing moisture in the soil is the most effective thing anyone can do to keep a concrete patio flat and intact over time.
Common questions
Some hairline cracking is normal in any slab, because concrete shrinks as it cures and our soils move underneath it. The goal is not to prevent cracks entirely, which is not possible, but to control them: proper base, reinforcement, thickness, and control joints guide the cracking to planned lines so it stays minor and unobtrusive rather than random and structural.
They do different things. Stamping presses texture and pattern into the slab so it reads like stone or plank, while staining adds color to an otherwise smooth or broom-finished surface. Many patios use both. The right choice depends on whether you want the surface to imitate another material or simply to carry a richer, permanent color.
Concrete is one continuous poured slab, which is more economical and seamless but cracks permanently when it does crack. Pavers are individual units on a flexible base that move with the soil and can be lifted and reset. In our expansive clay, concrete is the value option and pavers the more forgiving one; both are built well or poorly depending on the base.
Sometimes, but a standard patio slab is often too thin to anchor posts that carry a roof or heavy structure. The sound approach is to plan the loads before pouring and set structural footers in the slab. On an existing patio, we assess whether it can carry the structure or whether footers need to be added before anything is anchored.