Floors poured inside new and existing pole buildings, and the aprons in front of them. Compacted base, rebar throughout, joints saw cut into the slab and drains where the building needs them.
A pole building goes up as a shell. Posts, trusses, steel, doors, and then a dirt floor that everybody plans to deal with later. Later is usually the point at which somebody realises the floor is the part of the building they actually touch every day, and that it is carrying more weight than anything else on the property except the driveway.
Minnesota Valley Concrete pours those floors. Shop buildings, farm and storage buildings, detached garages built on posts, and the aprons that run out from the overhead doors. We are a flatwork contractor out of Carver, fifteen-plus years in the southwest Twin Cities metro, and a pole building floor is the same work as a driveway with a roof over it and heavier things parked on it.
The building being up already is not a problem, and in some ways it helps. A finished shell means the subgrade underneath has been protected from the weather, and it means we are pouring inside rather than fighting the forecast. What it does mean is access: the concrete has to reach the inside of the building, and on plenty of sites the door the truck could back up to is not the door that faces the driveway. That is one of the reasons we run our own line pump.
Every floor we pour is four to five inches thick with rebar through the whole slab on a compacted base, joints saw cut in after the pour, and drains installed where the use of the building calls for them. Floors get sealed on a case by case basis depending on what is going to live on them.
If you have a building up, or one going up this year, call 612-221-2181 with the dimensions and what you plan to keep in it. That second part changes the answer more than the first one does.
The loads are the first thing, and they are not the loads a house slab sees. A tractor, a skid loader, a loaded trailer, a lift, a truck with a plow hanging off the front of it: those are concentrated loads landing on a small footprint, and they land in the same handful of places over and over because that is where people park. A floor designed as though it were a basement slab gets punched and cracked by exactly that.
Moisture from underneath is the second, and it is the one people do not see coming. Ground moisture moves up through a slab by capillary action whether or not the building is heated, and in an unheated building it shows up as a wet floor on a humid day and as frost on the inside of the slab in the cold. A compacted granular base is what breaks that path, which is why the base matters as much in a building as it does outside.
The door line is the third. The transition at an overhead door is where the inside of the building meets the weather, where salt and slush come off a vehicle and sit, and where the ground outside freezes and the ground inside does not. That edge gets more abuse than the rest of the floor combined, and how it is formed, jointed and drained decides whether it stays intact.
The fourth is simply that a floor in a building is permanent in a way an outdoor slab is not. A cracked driveway gets torn out on a Tuesday. A cracked shop floor has a building sitting on top of it, a lift bolted through it, and whatever the building is full of standing on it. Doing the base and the steel right the first time is the entire argument, and it is a cheap argument at the time it gets made.
The most common call. A heated or unheated shop with vehicles, equipment and a work area, where the floor has to take point loads, tolerate a floor jack, and stay clean enough to work on. Drain placement and joint layout get planned around where the bays actually are.
Machinery storage, grain and implement buildings, and general cold storage. These see the heaviest concentrated loads and the most traffic in and out through a big door, so the base work and the apron carry most of the weight of the decision.
A post frame garage on a residential lot, poured with the apron and the approach in the same job so the concrete runs from the driveway into the building without a lip, a step or a joint in the wrong place.
We look at the dimensions, the door locations, the post spacing, what is going to be parked or stored inside, and how the concrete gets in. That last one is not a detail. On a finished building the access decides whether the pour is a chute job or a pump job, and the answer changes the schedule and the price.
The subgrade gets cut to depth, organics and soft spots come out, and compacted granular base goes in and gets compacted in lifts. Grade is set so the floor drains where it should drain and not toward the back wall.
Any drains get placed and piped before there is concrete over the top of them. Forms go in at the door lines and around the posts, then rebar is tied out across the floor and held up in the slab so it ends up in the concrete rather than under it.
Concrete is placed, screeded and finished flat. Inside a building we can usually work at a controlled pace, which is one of the advantages of pouring under a roof, and we finish to a surface that suits the use rather than defaulting to the same finish on every floor.
Joints get saw cut into the floor on time, which is the window that decides whether the slab cracks where the joints are or somewhere else. After that the floor cures before anything heavy goes on it, and we tell you how long that is for your pour rather than quoting a number off a page.
Drains are the clearest example of a decision that is cheap before the pour and expensive after it. A floor that will see wet vehicles, washing, or livestock wants somewhere for that water to go, and the drain has to be set and piped while the base is still open. We install custom drains where a building calls for them, and the layout gets worked out with you on site because it depends on where the doors are, where the work happens and where the water is going once it leaves the building.
Slope is the same conversation. A floor is not poured dead flat when there is any reason for water to leave it, and how much fall it gets and which way it runs is a decision, not a default. In a heated shop where vehicles come in loaded with snow, that slope is the difference between water reaching a drain and water standing in the middle of the bay until it evaporates.
Sealing is the one we deliberately do not blanket recommend. A sealed floor is easier to clean and holds up better against oil and chemicals, and it can also be slick, and it is another thing to maintain. Whether it is worth it depends on what the building is for, so we handle it on a personal basis rather than adding it to every quote. Ask on the walkthrough and you will get an opinion based on what you have told us the building is going to do.
We pour out of Carver, across the southwest Twin Cities metro and the country around it. Pole buildings skew toward the outer end of that: Carver and Scott counties, the towns along the river valley, and the acreages south and west of the metro where there is room for a building of that size in the first place.
Access matters more on these jobs than on almost anything else we do, and it is the first thing we look at. If a ready mix truck can back to the door, that is the simple version. If the building sits behind the house, on soft ground, or the only usable door faces away from the drive, we run our own trailer mounted line pump and put hose in through the door instead of driving a loaded truck across a yard.
Pour season is March to mid-October, same as everything else we do. A building that goes up in the fall usually gets its floor the following spring, and that is worth knowing early, because the shell going up is not the part that decides when you can use the building. Call 612-221-2181 with the size and the plan and we will tell you honestly where it lands in the calendar.
We pour four to five inches with rebar through the whole slab on a compacted base. Which end of that range a floor lands on comes down to what is going in the building. Equipment, a lift, a loaded trailer or regular truck traffic push it up. A storage building nobody drives into sits at the lower end.
Yes, and most of the floors we pour are in finished shells. The building being up protects the subgrade and takes the weather out of the schedule. The thing it changes is access, because the concrete still has to get inside. Where a truck cannot reach the door we run hose in from our own line pump.
We put rebar in all of them. Steel does not stop concrete from cracking. It holds a crack tight when one happens and keeps the slab working as one piece across it, which on a floor carrying concentrated loads is the difference between a hairline you ignore and two panels moving independently.
Yes. Drains get installed where the building calls for them, and they have to be set and piped before the pour while the base is still open. Where they go depends on the doors, the work area and where the water goes after it leaves the building, so that gets laid out on the walkthrough.
Sometimes. A sealed floor cleans up easier and stands up better to oil and chemicals, and it can also be slippery and it needs maintaining. We handle sealing on a personal basis rather than putting it on every quote, because a heated shop floor and a cold storage building are not the same question.
Yes, and it is worth doing in the same job. The apron takes the same traffic as the floor plus the weather, and pouring it with the floor means the transition at the door line gets formed and jointed as one decision rather than two slabs meeting wherever they happen to meet.
It is quoted per building. Square footage is the starting point, then the base work the site needs, thickness, whether drains are going in, how the concrete reaches the inside of the building, and whether an apron is part of it. We price it after we have walked the site.
New driveways and full tear out and replacement. Proper base, proper thickness, joints cut where they belong, so it does not crack the way the last one did.
Learn moreFoundation walls, footings and frost walls for new builds, additions and garages, formed and poured to the depth Minnesota code requires.
Learn moreBackyards, basements and anywhere the truck cannot back up to. Line pumping so the pour reaches the form instead of the wheelbarrow.
Learn moreTell us what you are planning, a patio, a driveway, a foundation or a pour you cannot reach. We will look at the site, explain what it actually needs, and give you a free written estimate.