Carport and Concrete Slab in Arlington, TX

Concrete first. The pad gets its base graded and compacted, forms set square to the columns rather than to the fence line, reinforcement sitting at depth on chairs, and the slab thickened where the column loads come down. Control joints get laid out so a joint does not run through the middle of a base plate.

Steel second. Columns, beams, purlins and the roof are cut, welded and coated on the shop benches from the dimensions we measured, then trucked out and set, plumbed and tightened. Same office booking both, so nobody is waiting on a phone call from the other trade.

What you get is one walk-through covering both, one written estimate with the concrete and the steel broken out as separate lines, and one company answering at hand-over. Take one line or both — multi-trade projects explains why nothing here is a package.

Anchor bolts set in green concrete pull out. That is not caution, it is the reason the two trades cannot happen on the same day, and it is why a carport quoted as a one-week job by somebody who only does steel usually turns into three visits.

The project planner puts three working days of cure between the pour and the day the steel crew anchors into it, on top of the normal handoff between crews. Fresh concrete is walkable in about a day, takes light vehicle traffic in about a week, and keeps gaining strength for a month — so the pad is not ready for a car the day the frame goes up either.

The wait costs nothing when it is planned, because fabrication is happening in the shop through the whole of it. That is the only reason booking the two together is faster than booking them apart.

Anchor bolts cast into a wet pour are held by the whole slab. A wedge anchor drilled in afterwards is held by whatever concrete happens to be around the hole — and on a carport the columns land near the slab edge, which is where there is least concrete to hold on to and most risk of spalling a corner off while you drill.

Setting them in the pour also means the layout is checked against the real steel before there is anything to correct. Column spacing gets templated off the fabrication drawing, not measured off a slab that has already set. If a bay comes out an inch wide, we find it with a tape and a wet form rather than with a hammer drill.

On an existing pad none of that is available, and drilled anchors are the honest answer — see the questions below.

It has to drain. A cover keeps rain off the middle and dumps it in a line along the edges, so the slope has to send that water away from the house rather than pooling against a post base — which is where steel rusts first.

North Texas clay moves. It swells when it is wet and shrinks in an August drought, and a slab that is going to carry point loads at four or six columns needs its reinforcement and its thickness planned for that, not just for the weight of a car.

And a carport is a structure. In almost every city around here that means a building permit, sometimes with an inspection before the pour while the steel and the grade are still visible. We confirm what your city wants during the walk-through — licensed and insured covers how that works.