Concrete footings in Junction City KS - a solid base sized for what you build

Most footing calls I get come before something else goes up, like a garage, a room addition, a porch or a carport. The footing is the part you'll never see again once it's buried, so it has to be right the first time. The price moves with how many footings you need, how big they have to be, how much digging the site takes and how much steel goes in them. The schedule mostly turns on the city inspection before the pour and the weather in the days after it. I measure and walk the site with you, then send a written estimate, so you have your own numbers before anything's dug.

We start from your plans or from what the building office tells us, because a footing's size has to match the weight it carries and a guess isn't good enough. We lay out where each footing goes, dig the trenches or holes down to firm soil and clean out the loose dirt, since a footing sitting on loose fill settles right along with it. Next we set the forms, the boards that hold the concrete's shape, and the rebar, the steel bars that help the concrete carry its load, wherever the plans call for them, and then we call in the inspection. On a cold morning we clear frost off the ground and forms before any concrete goes in, because concrete poured against frozen ground won't set up the way it should. After the pour we let it cure, which is the slow hardening that gives concrete its strength, before anything gets built on it.

Footings often run into other concrete work. If an old slab or walk sits right where a new footing has to go, our crew handles the concrete cutting to open up just that spot. And if the real trouble is an existing foundation that has already sunk, new footings may not be the fix, and foundation raising is the job to talk about.

Junction City's building permit list names a new house, a garage and a room addition, and it doesn't list footings as their own item, so the list alone won't tell you whether your footing job needs a permit. Building and Codes answers those questions, and I check with the city or county office on every job before we dig, then pull the permit when one's needed. Getting that order right matters here, because the city charges double the permit fee, up to $500, when a building permit is taken out after work has started.

The ground matters as much as the paperwork. Clay that swells and shrinks can press hard enough to crack foundations, and soil generally carries less weight the wetter it gets, so when a trench bottom comes up soft or soaked we stop and talk it over with you before anything's poured. We're based in Junction City and work in the cities around it, and we watch for the same thing on jobs in Manhattan and Abilene.