A new driveway or patio looks the same the day it's poured no matter who did the work. The differences show up two years later, when one job has a hairline crack running corner to corner and the other one still looks flat. Most of what separates the two happened before the truck even showed up.

Here's what to actually ask, and why the answer matters.

What's under the concrete matters more than what's on top

Shreveport sits on a lot of red clay, and clay moves. It swells when it's wet and shrinks when it dries out, and if the ground under a slab isn't compacted properly, that movement travels straight up into the concrete. Ask what the base prep looks like. A good answer sounds like: excavate the soft or organic material, compact the subgrade, then bring in 4 to 6 inches of crushed gravel and compact that in lifts before any forms go down. If someone tells you they're pouring straight onto the existing dirt, that's a driveway that's going to crack early.

Ask how they handle drainage too. Water pooling against a foundation or running back toward a garage slab isn't a small thing. A slab poured dead flat, or worse, sloped the wrong way, will show you the mistake the first time it rains hard.

Ask about the mix and the steel

Not all concrete is the same concrete. A sidewalk doesn't need the same mix as a driveway that's going to carry a truck. For residential driveways in this area, 3,500 PSI is a reasonable minimum, and some contractors will push to 4,000 PSI for anything that sees regular vehicle weight. Ask what PSI they're quoting and get it written down, because the ready-mix ticket at delivery should match it.

Then ask what's going in the concrete for reinforcement. Wire mesh is common and cheap, but it's easy to install wrong, and if it sits at the bottom of the pour instead of the middle it does almost nothing. Rebar, typically #3 or #4 bar on a grid, holds its position better and gives more strength where cracks tend to start. Fiber mesh mixed into the concrete itself helps with surface cracking but isn't a substitute for either one. None of this needs to be a mystery. A contractor who's done this a while will tell you straight what they use and why, without you having to push.

Joints, cracking, and how long before you can use it

Concrete is going to crack. That's not a defect, it's just what the material does as it cures and shrinks. The job of a control joint is to tell the concrete where to crack instead of letting it pick a spot in the middle of your patio. Joints should be cut within 24 to 48 hours of the pour, before the slab starts cracking on its own, and spaced at roughly 2 to 3 times the slab's thickness in feet. A 4-inch driveway slab, for example, usually gets joints every 8 to 10 feet.

Ask how long before you can walk on it and how long before you can park a car on it. Foot traffic is usually fine after about 24 to 48 hours. Driving on it is a different story, most residential mixes need 5 to 7 days before they can handle a vehicle, and the concrete isn't at full design strength until around 28 days. If a contractor tells you it's fine to drive on the next day, that's worth a second question.

Get it in writing before anyone shows up with a mixer truck

  • Thickness of the slab, in inches, written into the contract, not just described verbally
  • PSI of the mix and whether rebar, mesh, or fiber is included
  • Who pulls the permit, if one's required for the job
  • Proof of insurance, current, not a policy that lapsed last spring
  • Payment schedule, and what happens if weather pushes the pour back a week

None of this is complicated, but it's the part that gets skipped when someone's excited to get a project started. A contractor who answers these questions without hesitating has probably poured a lot of concrete in this area and dealt with this clay before. We go through all of this with every driveway, patio, and slab we bid. You can see the rest of what we do at Infinite Concrete Solutions.