Concrete footings in Fargo ND - a firm base for your deck, addition or garage

Most people call us with a plan in hand. It might be a deck, an addition, a garage or a lot a builder's ready to start. The price comes down to concrete, labor and digging, so a wider, deeper footing in soft ground can cost several times what a shallow one does, and I'll put your scope in writing when I walk the job. The schedule turns on the permit, getting the lines marked and the weather, because concrete doesn't forgive a bad day and I'd rather move a pour than rush it. We check with the city on what your job needs before we set a date. If you're starting a whole house, our foundation installation page covers that work.

Before anyone digs, we get the utility lines marked and set the layout, so the footings stay clear of buried lines, septic systems, leach fields and enclosed meters, which is where building guides say footings don't belong. Then we dig down to undisturbed soil, the firm ground nobody's moved, because a footing on loose or filled dirt settles right along with it. We set the forms and place the rebar, the steel bars that hold the concrete together if it cracks, and then we pour. After that the concrete cures, which is the wait while it gains strength before it carries any weight. In the cold months we plan how the new concrete gets protected before we order it. On most concrete you see the finish, but a footing gets buried soon after the pour and nobody looks at it again, so our time goes into the dig and the layout, where it counts.

Footings often come with other work. If your house has already settled and a corner's dropped, that's foundation raising, and it's worth fixing before new footings get tied to it. When an old slab or walk sits where a new footing has to go, we start with concrete cutting so we take out only what's in the way.

Permits here go through the city's Inspections Department, which takes requests on its online portal, and building in a designated floodplain also takes a floodplain development permit from the city. We check with the city on every job to see what it needs, and when a permit's required, we handle the application and set up the inspections with you. If the City Engineer puts your lot in one of the city's mapped flood areas, anything built there has to meet the city's floodproofing, elevation and fill rules, which can change how the footings are planned.

Under much of this area there's thick clay that swells when it's wet and shrinks when it dries, and the sandy pockets mixed into it move the most. The city also notes groundwater sits five to ten feet below the surface, depending on the time of year. So we look at what comes out of the hole and plan the dig around the water, instead of assuming one lot is like the next. We're based in Fargo, and we see the same clay on jobs in West Fargo, Moorhead and the cities around them.