Concrete cutting in Duluth MN - clean, straight cuts right where you need them

Usually you're here because something has to go through concrete that's already down, like a new drain line in a garage floor, a cracked driveway panel that has to come out or a basement wall that's getting a window. The price moves with how many feet we cut, how thick the concrete is, how much steel is in it, whether it's a round hole or a straight line and whether we break out and haul the pieces. The schedule mostly turns on whether the job needs a scan or a permit first. The estimate I give you at your site shows what your cut costs and says plainly whether removal is included.

Before we cut, I want to know what the cut is for, how thick the concrete is, what's around it and what might be hiding inside, like a pipe, a wire or rebar, the steel bars that hold a slab together. Then we match the saw to the job, because the wrong one makes a rough cut or can't reach the spot. A flat saw rides across a slab, a wall saw runs on a track along a wall, a hand saw gets into tight corners and a wire saw goes through thick or heavily reinforced sections, while round holes for pipes get core drilled. We mark the lines with you, make the cut, clean up and, if the quote includes it, break out the pieces and haul them off. When a trench goes back together, we pack the fill under the patch in layers, because a patch laid over loose dirt settles and cracks, and that hidden part matters more to me than how smooth the top looks on day one.

Cutting is often the first half of a bigger job. When a cracked or sunken section comes out of a driveway, the new pour is part of our concrete driveway building work, and when a patio gets cut back or opened up for a door or a drain, we pour the new piece through our concrete patio construction work. On new slabs we pour, we also saw control joints, shallow cuts that give the concrete a planned place to crack, and we cut them early so cracks land in our lines and not across the middle.

The city of Duluth requires a building permit for foundation, wall and other structural work, so a cut into a foundation or a structural wall goes through the city before the saw does. If the cut is for a new bedroom window, the city also wants a building permit, a new smoke or CO alarm and an egress window, one big enough to get out through in an emergency, and the permit application has to include the window supplier's papers showing the window meets egress and energy code. The city's list doesn't name cutting by itself, so for a cut that isn't structural, the city's permit office is the place to ask, and we check before we start. When a job needs a permit, we pull it and book the inspections, and if you'd rather apply yourself, I'll tell you what the city will want to see from us.

We're based in Duluth and work in Superior, Hermantown, Cloquet and the cities around them. A lot of what we cut is older basements getting new drain lines or windows, garage floors being trenched and driveway panels coming out ahead of a new pour, and we see the same kinds of jobs in Hermantown and Cloquet.