Cost Analysis
Stamped concrete $13 - $20.00 range.
The 4 main factors in determining price are:
TYPE OF CONCRETE FINISHING SYSTEM TO BE INSTALLED: At SmallConcreteJobs.Com, we offer several different concrete products to choose from. We install regular white and coloured brush finished and power troweled concrete, exposed aggregate (pebble look), and stamped concrete. Generally speaking, stamped concrete and exposed aggregate concrete are very close in price to each other. Typically, they both cost approximately $4-5 more than a regular white broom finished driveway. The higher price is attributed to colouring the concrete all the way through, additional pigments used for accent colouring, specialty finishing and chemistry and sealing it with concrete sealer that has been treated with a slip resistant additive.
ACCESSIBILITY TO THE SITE: For most residential applications, customers want work done in either the back yard, front yard, side yard or all three. Accessibility ranges from inaccessible to easily accessible. For instance, installing a back yard patio way at the back corner of the back yard while accessing it through a small, 3 ft gate opening in the back yard is probably the worst case scenario. When we have to go through an opening that small, we have to hand dig the area and wheelbarrow the excavated material out, as well as wheelbarrow the new concrete in. Not only is this very laborious, but it takes longer to get the excavated material out and the concrete back in. Needless to say, this increases price. Quite often we recommend to our customers to take a section of fence out whenever possible in order to provide a 6 foot opening into the backyard. This allows us to be able to get our skidsteer or small landscaping tractor into the area which saves time and money. When pouring fresh concrete, time is of the essence. Especially in hot weather. When concrete takes too long to get into the work area, it hardens before it has a chance to be levelled and finished properly. The outcome of this can be disappointing results. Concrete must be somewhat soft while working with it in order to get it to the desired finish. If it takes too long to get the concrete inside the install area, the time window of workability is consumed and the quality can be compromised. For these reasons, we often need to use a concrete pump to discharge the concrete quickly and efficiently directly into the work area. Although pumps work really well to ensure a timely placement and quality control, they typically cost anywhere between $800 and $1500 to rent one with an operator.
Material to be excavated and/or removed: Many people think that removing old concrete, asphalt or interlocking brick rather than grass / dirt brings about extra labour expense and dumping fees. This simply isn’t true. Asphalt, concrete and interlocking brick are usually quicker to remove with equipment such as a skid steer or backhoe. Then it can be brought to a recycling (crusher) yard, where they will accept it for free or a very small fee. Some crushers charge a small amount to dump and others charge nothing. They then crush it into gravel that they will sell as base material for under asphalt roads, concrete, and other applications. Dirt, grass, and other organic material have no such use. They usually sift, or screen dirt to become a fine topsoil that they sell, but the environmental regulatons that must be complied with these days create expenses which have to be covered by the customers. This handling and testing of the materials creates additional expense for the recycling yards to handle, and dirt can cost up to $60.00 per ton to dump. This can really add up.
Size of the area: Large jobs have a lower cost per square foot than smaller ones. When a job is smaller, the unit price is raised in order for an installer to be able to cover the fixed expenses that every contractor faces. When a job is larger, there are more square feet to offset these expenses, allowing a lower unit price to be offered.
To give you an example of how these factors affect price, here is an example… It is more expensive per square foot to install a small (size) patio at the far reaches of the backyard where grass (material to be excavated and / or removed) currently exists while travelling through a 3 foot wide gate opening (accessibility) with a wheelbarrow than it is to do a large driveway at the front of the house where there may already be an adequate amount, or at least some gravel in place. There is usually gravel present in driveway areas… either from the homeowners having an existing gravel driveway, or in cases when an old driveway was removed, the gravel which once there as base material for that old driveway will still be present. The driveway area can most often be directly accessed by equipment and the concrete truck, making the job much easier and less time consuming.
When preparing a base for new concrete, there is no need to not use some or all of the existing gravel. It can be graded, compacted and used as base for under the new concrete. Sometimes when existing gravel is removed in order to make room for the new concrete to be put in its place, the amount of gravel left could be inadequate to act as a sufficient base. In this case, some of the natural ground (dirt, clay) that was under the gravel will have to be removed in order to make room for a minimum of 6 inches of gravel necessary for a proper gravel base. When this happens, you can still use the old gravel if it hasn’t been mixed with the dirt or clay during the excavating, but you must add new gravel in with it in order to have the necessary amount to constitute an adequate base.
When evaluating how to price a concrete project, larger driveways at the front of the house in a highly accessible area will cost less money per sq ft than what smaller, inaccessible backyard projects do. While installing a new driveway, a concrete truck can be pulled right onto the compacted gravel base. The concrete can then be discharged out of the truck directly into the area, where it can then be spread, screeded, and finished. This takes far less labour and time than wheelbarrowing the concrete back to a backyard area.
We hope that this explanation of the factors that affect how new concrete installations are priced has been helpful. Should you have any additional questions, please contact us, and we will do our best to provide you with further explanation.