New Construction Garage Floor

7 years ago

We are in the process of building a new home. We had the garage door company come out to prep for installing two 9’ wide garage doors. They came back and said that one of the doors was out of square by an inch. Turns out the concrete company poured the concrete for one of the 9’ openings so unlevel that it slopes 1” from one side to the other of the opening. We went back to our builder and asked them to coordinate a remedy with the concrete subcontractor as 1” seemed excessive. They came back and said that the door company should be able to resolve it. Can someone tell me if we should push more for the concrete sub to fix their mistake or if 1” isn’t abnormal? I know garage floors will settle with time but to have a 1” fall from the start with a brand new floor seems like an error that needs to be fixed.

Featured Answer

just_janni

7 years ago

1" over 9' is about 1% and is excessive. I have less than 1" over 120' and honestly some of that was by design to deal with some door opening issues.

Having the door company deal with it is a cop out. What are they supposed to do, break out the trapezoidal door panels?

Does this slope continue past the door? Are you going to have major puddling somewhere when you bring in a wet car? The garage SHOULD slope some OUT the door for water / mess to flow out of the house.

I'd bring some marbles and see what's up.

Concrete contractor should have been able to hold better tolerances than what was the result.

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Comments (6)

PRO
Virgil Carter Fine Art
7 years ago
It does sound like the general contractor and the concrete sub contractor are tying to dodge the issue.

The direction of slope isn't clear in your description. Is the "out of square" on a vertical side of one door, or on the slab at the bottom of the door? If it's the slab on the bottom of the door, is it possible to add a lightweight self-leveling fill?

Good luck on your project.
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L S
Original Author
7 years ago
It’s the floor slab. We have two 9’ wide garage bays. It’s the floor of left side garage bay if you were looking from the driveway at the garage and the slope runs downward from the middle of the two bays towards to left side exterior wall. We are definitely pushing back on them to make corrective action. We talked with several garage door companies in the area as well. We wanted to make sure we weren’t having unrealistic expectations but it sounds like an error was made by the concrete company.
PRO
PPF.
7 years ago
I think the error is unacceptable, and that the builder should correct.

The problem is how. You cannot just pore a thin layer of concrete to make things level -- you need to remove what's there and pore a new section.

With a wall in the way, not so easy.

Depending on the construction -- post a picture for best response, it might be possible for the wall to be down an inch as well.

And, concrete, garage floor or other, should not "settle over time".
worthy
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
It's not your job to find a cure. It's the contractor's job to complete to specs and/ or the applicable Building Code. The slope should be from the rear of the slab to the front, typically 2%-3%. Not side to side--unless, of course, that's where the door(s) are.

The contractors know that the only "cure" is to break up the slab and re-pour.

If this happened on a new build I was doing--and I didn't catch it before it was done-- I would be sure that the building inspector noted it a "fail" so there is no question about its unacceptability as determined by an impartial authority.
sprink1es
7 years ago
That is not acceptable. My sister built a house where that concrete part was level, but it was way too high I think. Concrete guy tried to skirt the issue by ordering a new OHD frame behind her back, but didn't realize it's our company that makes the frames lol. Then they said they'll only cut out a 2x16' rectangle to fix (which would be a crappy grade). She had him tear out the concrete up to the nearest saw joint to do it right (for free) and he did.