Questions Grand Strand homeowners ask us

The crews that work through us carry general liability and workers' compensation, hold the City of Myrtle Beach business license, and carry the state residential contractor credentials the city asks for on its driveway permits. The certificate of insurance is available before anyone backs a truck up your drive, and you should ask every contractor for the same.

For the apron in the right-of-way, almost always: the City of Myrtle Beach's permit through Construction Services, Horry County's free encroachment permit on county roads, SCDOT's free permit on state routes (US 17, the Bypass, 501, SC 544, 31, 22, 9, 90, 701), and North Myrtle Beach, Conway, Surfside and Pawleys have their own. The driveway on your own lot is exempt from a county building permit. HOAs review nearly everything. We pull the right one.

Broom-finish flatwork runs $6–$10 per square foot installed and reinforced; stamped and colored work $12–$20; a two-car driveway $4,000–$6,500; a city-spec apron $1,200–$2,800; a county apron with a culvert $1,800–$4,500; a 400-square-foot pool deck $3,200–$5,200; a cart pad $700–$1,500; foam lifting a sunken section $600–$1,800. Removal is $1.10–$1.80 per square foot plus the landfill's $15 a ton.

No. We measure, look at the drainage and the right-of-way, and leave a written itemized price good for 30 days.

Not until you've approved the written price and we've scheduled the work. Most residential jobs are paid on completion.

The original builder poured over the utility trench and the ditch backfill without compacting it, and the sand washed out from under the slab over the years. If the slab is sound it can be foam-lifted; if it's cracked through or below the city's six-inch apron spec, it's replaced.

Six inches thick, 3,000 psi, fiber mesh only (no steel or welded wire), five-foot return radii, no wider than twenty feet at the property line, nothing within five feet of a side property line or twenty feet of a corner, an expansion joint at the property line, a form inspection before the pour and a final after, and a tie-in that doesn't change how the street drains.

Four inches for driveways, patios, walks and cart pads on your lot; five or six with rebar for boat, RV and hot-tub pads; six at a city apron. Thickness matters less than the compacted base under it.

It hurts the steel inside it. Chlorides from spray reach bare mesh or rebar near the surface, the steel rusts and expands, and the slab spalls from inside. Within reach of the ocean we use a denser mix, fiber or epoxy-coated reinforcement set on chairs, and a sealer on decorative work.

Yes — flatwork at grade is fine in an AE zone. Foundations have to meet the lowest-floor rule (three feet above base flood in the City of Myrtle Beach, a foot in North Myrtle Beach) and fill is regulated, especially in VE zones and the critical areas near the marsh and the beach.

Constantly. A reinforced 6-by-12 pad beside the drive, doweled in, with a path to the street or the community trail, drawn for the HOA. See the golf cart guide for the state's rules.

Stamped is one slab with no joints for weeds and sand and costs less; pavers can be relaid if they settle (and they do settle on sand) but never crack. Our concrete-versus-pavers guide walks through it.

Usually — polyurethane foam injected under the deck fills the void and lifts it back to grade in a morning, without touching the pool shell. If the deck is spalling from rust or cracked into pieces, it's a replacement or a resurface instead.

Yes — Myrtle Beach, Carolina Forest, North Myrtle Beach, Conway, Socastee and Burgess, Surfside Beach and Garden City, Murrells Inlet, Pawleys Island and Litchfield, Little River and Longs, Loris and Aynor, and Red Hill: Horry County and the Georgetown County side of the Strand.

24 hours a day, every day. A person answers, takes the details, and an estimator calls you back the next morning.

Walk on it the next day, park a car in seven days, a heavy truck or trailer in 28. Stamped work gets its sealer at two to four weeks.