Preparation
Slab Prep and Floor Leveling in Leander, TX
Grinding, levelling pours, moisture testing and membranes. It is the line most quotes leave off and the one that decides whether anything laid on top of it lasts.
- Pricing
- Estimated per square foot once the slab has been surveyed
- Timeline
- Adds days rather than weeks, but a levelling pour must cure before anything goes on it
What this covers
Everything that happens to a slab or a subfloor before a finish floor goes onto it: moisture testing, flatness survey, diamond grinding, patching, self-levelling pours, moisture mitigation coatings, crack isolation and uncoupling membranes, acoustic build-ups and radiant heat assemblies.
It is the least glamorous page on this site and it is the one that decides whether everything else lasts. It is also, reliably, the line item that separates two quotes that otherwise look the same.
Two slabs, two entirely different problems
A slab in this service area can be out of level for two causes that look identical and require opposite responses.
Up on the Edwards limestone — Cedar Park, Liberty Hill, Bee Cave, Lakeway, western Leander — the slab was poured over rock or cut caliche. It has not moved. If it is out of level, it was placed that way, most likely during a fast build in a boom year. Grinding and filling it corrects the problem permanently, because there is nothing underneath that is going to undo the work.
Out on the Taylor Marl and the Blackland — Hutto, Pflugerville, Manor, Taylor, eastern Round Rock — the slab sits on highly plastic clay that swells and shrinks with the seasons. It is out of level because it moved, and it will move again. The correction has to be designed around that: a floating floor rather than a bonded one, a crack-isolation membrane under rigid tile, and realistic expectations about what “level” means over a ten-year horizon.
Both are solvable. They are not solvable the same way, and a contractor who does not distinguish between them will get one of them wrong.
The drought cycle
Central Texas runs through severe multi-year dry spells, and they are the mechanism behind most of the eastern movement.
Through a long drought the clay under a slab perimeter loses volume and the edge settles. When the rains return, it swells and lifts again. The full amplitude of that cycle can be substantial, and it does not resolve in a season.
This has a direct practical consequence: grinding a floor flat at the bottom of a dry cycle and finishing the installation the same month produces a floor that is out of true in the opposite direction eighteen months later. Where a house shows signs of active seasonal movement, we say so, and sometimes the right sequence is to address the ground before spending money on the floor. That is a smaller job for us, not a bigger one, which is why it is worth trusting.
Moisture testing done properly
Relative humidity probes go into holes drilled into the slab and they need 72 hours to equilibrate before the reading means anything. That is ASTM F2170 and it is not a formality — a probe read early reads low, which is the dangerous direction, because it tells you the slab is drier than it is.
You get the number in writing. It matters twice: once when we choose the adhesive, and again years later if a manufacturer warranty claim is ever made, because nearly every finish-floor warranty in this industry is conditional on documented substrate moisture at the time of installation.
Where the reading comes back above the adhesive’s limit — commonly somewhere between 75 and 85 percent — an epoxy moisture mitigation coating goes down first. That is a real line item, it is not cheap, and it is the single most common omission on a competing quote.
The flatness survey
A ten-foot straightedge across the whole floor, with every deviation outside tolerance recorded rather than estimated. Then a decision: grind, fill, pour, or a combination.
There is no universal standard of flat, and anyone quoting one is guessing. Carpet forgives a great deal. Rigid-core plank wants roughly 3/16 inch in ten feet. Large-format tile wants closer to 1/8 inch. Our estimate states the tolerance we are working to and ties it to the material you have chosen.
Post-tension tendon location
Almost every slab poured here since the early 1980s is post-tension. Steel tendons sit under high load inside the concrete and, unlike rebar, they do not follow a grid you can infer from the outside.
Nothing gets cored, anchored or deeply ground until they are located. This is the step that gets skipped by crews who have not worked on Central Texas slabs, and cutting a tendon converts a flooring job into a structural repair. It appears on our estimate as its own line with its own cost, and it is not negotiable.
Slabs on shallow limestone bring a related hazard: where the subgrade is rock rather than compacted fill, the slab is often thinner than the drawing says and the reinforcement sits closer to the surface than expected. Taking down a high spot without knowing that is how a grinder finds steel.
What else lives here
Radiant heat and acoustic assemblies are substrate work rather than flooring work, and both change the finished floor height — which has to be reconciled at doors, thresholds and the bottom stair riser before anything is committed.
Crack isolation and uncoupling membranes are specified here because the decision is a substrate decision, even though the visible result is a tile floor.
Typical market ranges for this work
Central Texas bands collected from published contractor pricing, so you walk into the conversation with a reference point. They are not our quote. Which end of a band a specific job lands on is decided by the substrate, not by the plank.
Refinishing, repair and substrate preparation
| Item | Typical band |
|---|---|
| Sand and refinish hardwood — three coats Which timber it is, and how much of its sanding life previous owners already spent | $3.50 to $7 per sq ft |
| Screen and recoat — no sanding Only viable while the finish is worn but not breached through to bare wood | $1.25 to $3.25 per sq ft |
| Dust containment Matters more in an occupied house than an empty one, and should be asked about either way | Usually inside the sq ft rate |
| Replacing individual boards, matched to the floor Finding a match for 1920s longleaf pine is the cost, not the carpentry | $120 to $450 per board |
| Water damage repair — per affected room How long it sat, and whether the subfloor or the slab took it | $450 to $2,000 |
| Subfloor repair or replacement Joist condition in a pier-and-beam house is unknowable until it is open | $3.50 to $10 per sq ft |
| Slab grinding and flatness correction The gap between what the slab measures and what the chosen floor will accept | $1.25 to $4.50 per sq ft |
| Self-levelling underlayment pour Depth. A quarter-inch skim and a two-inch pour are not the same job | $2.50 to $9 per sq ft |
| Crack isolation or uncoupling membrane Standard specification on clay east of the escarpment; optional on rock west of it | $1.75 to $4 per sq ft |
Typical Central Texas market bands, collected from published contractor pricing. Not a quote.