The same spec and care we put into steps
Capital Steps is Ottawa’s front step specialist, and steps will always be most of what we do. But a front step rarely stands alone. It meets a walkway, sits beside a driveway and shares the same weather. The freeze-thaw and road salt that break down a step work just as hard on every slab around it. So when we pour general concrete, we bring the step standard with us: the mix, the base, the joints and the cure.
One exterior spec for everything that gets salted
The national concrete standard, CSA A23.1, puts plain concrete exposed to freeze-thaw and chlorides in exposure class C-2. CSA’s own examples include garage floors, porches, steps, pavements and sidewalks, and Concrete Ontario’s residential guide applies the same class to walkways, driveways and patios.
The Ontario Building Code says the same thing. Garage floors and all exterior flatwork need 32 MPa at 28 days, 5–8 % entrained air for site-batched concrete and a water-cement ratio of no more than 0.45 (OBC 9.3.1.6–9.3.1.7). That’s what we order for every driveway, walk, pad and garage floor. The MPa guide explains what each number does.
What we pour
- Driveways: broom, exposed aggregate or stamped, on an excavated and compacted granular base. We also flag any City access permit up front.
- Walkways: front walks set at the right height for your steps, so the bottom riser stays in line with the rest.
- Patios and pads: backyard patios, shed pads and hot tub pads.
- Garage floors: slab replacement to the garage-floor spec, with an optional quartz or flake coating.
- Concrete and retaining walls: landscape walls with drainage behind them, plus a permit check for anything over 1 m.
Where the care goes
The Building Code doesn’t set a thickness or base depth for exterior flatwork. A contractor decides those, and they’re the details worth getting in writing. Ottawa’s Leda clay can keep settling long after construction, so we dig out soft material and build a compacted granular base.
Control joints go in at 24 to 36 times the slab thickness, no more than about 4.5 m apart, and cut at least a quarter of the way through. We finish without working bleed water into the surface and cure for at least a week. At the end you get a first-winter card: no de-icer of any kind for the first winter, and sand for traction. Our process page walks through a job from start to finish.
Price and planning
Larger broom-finished flatwork runs about $9–$15 per sq ft in Ottawa. Small pours often carry a minimum charge of about $1,500–$5,500 once ready-mix short-load fees, mobilization and a finishing crew are counted. Use the volume calculator below to estimate how much concrete your slab needs, and see the concrete cost guide for driveway, walkway and patio ranges.
Planning new front steps? That’s the best time to redo the walk or pad beside them, with one base, one crew and one schedule.