Concrete contractor in Oklahoma City, OK

Concrete floors built for OKC heat and cold

Bel Covo is a concrete contractor in Oklahoma City, OK. Floors here take a beating from both ends of the thermometer. A floor has to handle 100-degree summers and below-freezing Januarys in the same year. We put down garage coatings, polished concrete, stain, stamped patios, and new slabs across the metro. We also pour slabs and finish them under one spec, so the crew that poured your slab answers for how the finish holds up on it.

Where do we work from?

Our shop is in Prague, roughly 58 miles east of downtown OKC, which puts most jobs in the metro about an hour and fifteen minutes away. OKC sits well inside our normal work area. We cover the whole city, from Bricktown storefronts to new driveways in south OKC.

Which OKC garage and inside floors do we put down?

Epoxy floor coatings. We use 100% solids epoxy, which means nothing in the can dries away, so what we roll on stays on the floor. It builds to 20+ mils in one coat. (A mil is a thousandth of an inch.) First we shot blast the slab to a rough surface the coating can grip, which a bid calls ICRI CSP 3-5. A coat that thick stands up to hot tire pickup, where warm tires peel a thin coating off the floor. Thin ones lose that fight. It’s a good fit for OKC garages and shop floors, hangar shops out by Tinker included. Learn more about epoxy flooring.

Polyaspartic floor coatings. Polyaspartic cures in hours, not days, and most garages are back in use in about 24 hours. It also holds up in the sun, which matters here, because direct OKC sun breaks down cheaper coatings within two to three years. See our polyaspartic coatings.

Polished concrete. We grind the floor with diamonds, step by step, from 50 grit up to 3000. It comes out shiny and resists stains with no coating on top. Stores and restaurants in OKC like polished concrete because it handles foot traffic and looks better with age. Hiring a polished concrete floor contractor comes down to the grind plan. Ask for the day-by-day grit steps before any crew loads a grinder, ours included.

Sealed concrete. A penetrating sealer keeps water out without changing how the floor looks. We use lithium silicate densifiers, which react with the concrete and harden it from the inside instead of sitting on top as a film. That matters in OKC, where winter freezes crack unsealed slabs. Learn about sealed concrete.

Can you stain, stamp, or resurface an old OKC slab?

Yes, as long as the slab underneath is sound. This is where a tired floor or patio gets a second life.

Stained concrete. Acid stain and water-based dye give concrete a color that looks like natural stone. Every slab takes the color a little differently, so no two match, and that’s the charm of it. It suits restaurants and art studios, where the floor is part of the look. Acid stain works outside too. The color goes into the concrete, so a stained patio won’t peel the way a painted patio does. Dye fades faster in the sun, so on an OKC patio we lean toward acid stain. View stained concrete options.

Stamped concrete. Stamped concrete looks like stone, brick, or wood plank, and it costs less per square foot than the real thing. We press rigid mats into the wet concrete and add color and a release agent to give it real-looking depth. Stamped patios and pool decks across the metro hold up under the Oklahoma sun when they’re resealed every 2 to 3 years. View stamped concrete.

Concrete overlays. Say your slab has surface damage but is still solid underneath. A polymer-modified overlay gives it a new top layer for a fraction of what a tear-out costs. We grind the old surface with diamonds, spread the overlay 1/4” to 3/8” thick, and seal it. You see overlays a lot in older OKC commercial buildings, where tearing out a floor would disrupt the tenants next door. Details on concrete overlays.

Decorative concrete. Sometimes the floor is part of the room’s look. Stamped, acid-stained, and polished finishes can turn a plain slab into the thing people notice first. Explore decorative concrete flooring across the OKC metro.

What about new driveways, patios, and slabs?

OKC sits on expansive clay, which swells when it’s wet and shrinks when it dries, so the ground under a slab moves with the seasons. New concrete has to be built for that.

Concrete driveways. We pour driveways at least 4” thick with fiber mesh. We space the control joints (the cut lines that tell a slab where to crack) to match the slab’s width. We also pack the ground underneath hard before we pour, and that heads off the settling cracks you see in a lot of newer south OKC neighborhoods. See our driveway work.

Concrete patios. You can use a patio here most of the year. We finish patios with a broom texture so they aren’t slick, or with exposed aggregate for a decorative look. Each one slopes at least 1/8” per foot so rain runs away from the house instead of toward it. Explore patio options.

Garage slabs. A garage slab carries cars and stored gear through below-freezing winters and 110-degree summer days. We pour garage slabs at least 4” thick with welded wire and a vapor barrier underneath. Garage slab details.

Interior slabs. Most OKC buildings sit on a slab poured right on the ground. We get the slab flat at the pour, which contractors measure with FF and FL numbers, and a flat pour saves grinding time and coating later. We check every slab. If one shows warning signs of moisture, we test it two ways before the finish goes on: a calcium chloride kit and a relative humidity probe. Interior slab details.

Commercial flatwork. Warehouse floors, loading docks, and commercial pads need joints laid out for forklifts and rack loads. We pour to superflat tolerances when the job calls for it, and where traffic crosses, we put in armored joints with steel edges. Commercial flatwork services cover the pour. For a finished commercial floor with a coating or polish, see commercial concrete flooring.

What should you ask any OKC floor contractor?

OKC has plenty of coating installers running preset product lines out of branded vans, and most of them do fine work. Before you sign with anyone, ask two things:

1. How many mils thick does your coating end up?
2. Did your crew pour the slab, or just coat it?

The answers tell you what you’re buying. A lot of coating-only outfits put one system down at one thickness, no matter what the slab needs, because they never saw the pour or what went under it. We pour concrete too, so we read the slab before we coat it. We look at how much moisture comes up through it, how rough the surface is, and how alkaline the concrete is. When we coat a floor, we often know what’s under it because we put it there. Ask that of whoever you hire, us included.

We’ve poured and finished more than 3 million square feet since 2004. The bar for every crew is plain. Show up when we said we would. Walk you through the prep before we start, not after something goes wrong. Send a bill that matches the quote. None of that is fancy, but it’s what good prep and the right materials are supposed to give you.

How do OKC heat and freezes change the floor we pick?

OKC runs from single digits in January to 100-plus in July and August, and concrete grows and shrinks through that range every year. In winter, water soaks into bare concrete, freezes, and cracks the surface. In summer, the sun breaks down coatings that lack UV protection. A floor here has to handle both, so before we pick a system, we look at three things:

• How much freeze and thaw an outdoor slab will see
• Whether the slab shows warning signs of moisture coming up through it (if it does, we test it with a calcium chloride kit)
• How much sun hits south- and west-facing surfaces

We pick materials rated for this climate, and we adjust cure times to the heat or cold on the day we install. Then there’s paperwork. New driveways, structural slabs, and right-of-way work need a city permit, and our Oklahoma City concrete permit guide walks through the steps.

What moves the price on an OKC floor?

Price depends on square footage, the shape your slab is in, and the system you pick. A basic sealed floor costs less per square foot than a full-flake polyaspartic floor. Polished concrete falls somewhere in between, and where it lands depends on how much of the stone in the concrete shows through and how glossy you want the floor. For OKC epoxy prices, our epoxy floor cost study found a median of $8.82^[1] per square foot across 82 Oklahoma quotes, with its own OKC metro cut.

Our shop is about 58 miles from Oklahoma City, and the drive costs something. Our online quote tool figures that travel cost from your address and shows it as its own line, not folded into the per-foot price. Ask any contractor whether travel is split out or baked into the square-foot number. A buried travel cost makes bids hard to compare. You see our number before you commit.

Cities also served near Oklahoma City

We work all over the OKC metro. If your project is in a nearby city, we likely have crews in the area already.

• Edmond, about 15 miles north up Broadway Extension
• Norman
• Moore, roughly 11 miles south on I-35
• Midwest City
• Yukon