How to Choose a Concrete Contractor in Pittsburgh

Verify the Pennsylvania Registration

Pennsylvania requires contractors performing home improvement work above a certain threshold to register with the Attorney General's office and to display that registration number.

Ask for it, and then actually look it up through the state's contractor search. It takes two minutes. Ultimate Concrete Service is PA HIC# PA196507.

A contractor who cannot produce a number, or gets vague about it, has told you everything you need to know.

Get It in Writing and Itemized

A written, itemized estimate is not a formality. It is the document that lets you compare two bids and see whether they cover the same work.

A lump sum on the back of a business card cannot be compared to anything. An itemized estimate showing demolition, excavation, base material, reinforcement, concrete, finishing, joints, and sealing can be laid beside another one line by line, and that is where you discover that the cheaper bid did not include removing your existing slab.

Ours are free, itemized, and hold for thirty days so you have time to compare without a number moving on you.

Ask What Happens Below the Slab

This is the single best question to ask, because the answer separates people fast.

Ask: how deep are you excavating, what base material are you using, how deep is it, and how is it being compacted?

A contractor who does this properly will answer immediately and specifically, because it is what they do every day. A contractor who is planning to pour on whatever is there will get general, change the subject to the finish, or tell you it does not matter much.

It matters most. Nearly every concrete failure we get called out to inspect traces back to what was underneath, not to the concrete.

Ask About Thickness and Reinforcement

Get the slab thickness in writing, and tell them what you actually park.

Four inches is the residential [driveway](/services/concrete-driveways) minimum. If you park a full size truck, RV, trailer, or boat, that should be five or six inches with reinforcement sized accordingly, and a contractor who knows the trade will raise it before you do.

Also ask how reinforcement is supported. Mesh lying flat on the base does nothing at all. It has to be held up into the slab to work, and that is a real step that takes real time.

Be Suspicious of the Phone Quote

In Western Pennsylvania specifically, a firm price over the phone is a warning sign.

Access, grade, drainage, existing conditions, and soil vary enormously property to property here. A job on a flat lot the truck can reach and the identical job on a hillside back yard forty steps down are genuinely different prices. Anyone quoting the second one sight unseen is either going to change the number later or cut something to make it work.

This is doubly true anywhere in the [city](/areas/pittsburgh), where hillside access is the defining cost variable.

Ask Who Is Actually Doing the Work

Find out whether the person estimating your job will be on site while it is poured.

There is nothing inherently wrong with subcontracting, but you should know. The gap between the person who sold the job and the person holding the trowel is where accountability tends to disappear.

At Ultimate Concrete Service, Dave Felouzis does the estimate and Dave is on the job. That is the whole reason the company is sized the way it is.

Red Flags Worth Walking Away From

• No PA registration number, or reluctance to give it
• Pressure to decide today, or a discount that expires this week
• A large deposit demanded up front before any material is on site
• Door to door solicitation with leftover material from another job
• No written estimate, or a written estimate with one line on it
• Promising a crack free driveway. All concrete cracks. The job is controlling where
• Promising an invisible repair on exterior concrete. Not possible
• No local address or a phone number that goes to voicemail permanently
• A price dramatically below every other bid, with no explanation of what is different

What a Straight Answer Sounds Like

A good contractor will sometimes tell you not to do the work.

They will tell you a [repair](/services/concrete-repair) will get you another decade and a replacement is not necessary. They will tell you to wait for spring because a January pour will not give you as good a slab. They will tell you the overlay you want is not viable because the substrate is failing, even though the overlay is the easier sale.

Twenty plus years in, that is the standard we hold to. If the honest answer costs us the job, it costs us the job.