Steps, stoops and landings are the first concrete anyone touches on a house, and they take more abuse than any other flatwork on the property. A front stoop carries every delivery, every visitor, every trip out to the mail. We are a concrete contractor, and entry work is a steady part of what we pour: new sets, replacements, and the short run of sidewalk that ties a landing back to the drive. Around Savannah the median home dates to 1971, so a lot of original entry concrete is well past fifty.
Work starts at the footing, because a set of steps is only as good as what sits underneath it. We form to the rise and run we measure on site, tie rebar down through the footing and up into the risers, then pour monolithic where the layout allows. Permits go through the City of Savannah when a job calls for one, and that paperwork is ours to handle rather than yours.
Failures come from a short list. Steps pulling away from the house because they were set on fill nobody compacted. Risers that vary an inch or more, which people trip on long before they work out why. Spalled treads and rounded nosings on old sets. Steel left out entirely, so the first crack runs the full depth of the slab and keeps going. None of it is dramatic. It is work done fast.
Doing it right costs time more than anything else: digging a real footing, letting the concrete cure before it takes load, matching the finish to whatever is already on the ground. A broom finish, exposed aggregate and stamped concrete each ask for different attention at different moments, and the decision is easier to make standing at the door than over the phone. Call for a free estimate.
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Poured steps sit on compacted subgrade with a footing under the bottom riser, rebar tied through the run, and treads around four inches thick. Broom finish for grip. As a concrete contractor we keep rise and tread even, since uneven rise on commercial concrete entries fails inspection.
A porch slab wants wire mesh or rebar set in four inches of concrete, sloped about a quarter inch per foot away from the door. Stamped concrete and exposed aggregate both wear well underfoot. Where the porch meets a concrete sidewalk, we isolate that joint so the two move separately.
Savannah's housing stock runs old. The median home here was built in 1971, which means a lot of the front steps in this city are more than fifty years into a life nobody designed them for. We pour steps, stoops and landings for houses like that: replacements for sets that have shifted, new work where a porch or back door has been rebuilt, and side entries that were never finished in concrete to begin with. Some are two risers. Some are eight.
Every set starts below grade. We dig a footing, set forms square to the house, and tie rebar through the footing into the step mass so the whole thing moves as one piece. Wire mesh or bar goes into the landing depending on its size. Risers get measured, not eyeballed, so the rise stays the same from the bottom tread up to the door. Uneven risers are what people trip on.
Old steps fail in a few predictable ways. The tread noses break off first, because they are the thinnest part and take the most traffic. Steps pull away from the house when the original pour had no footing under it, and the gap widens a little every year. Patching buys a season or two. Once the mass has cracked through, or the top step sits low against the threshold, patch work stops being worth doing. We say so plainly.
Finishes are a choice, not an upgrade you have to take. A broom finish on the treads gives the most grip, and it is what most houses of this era had from the start. Stamped or colored concrete works where the steps meet a stamped patio or a newer concrete driveway and you want the surfaces to read as one. Exposed aggregate wears well and hides scuffing. Treads can stay broomed while the landing gets the pattern.
Getting a set of steps right is mostly about what happens before the concrete shows up: footing depth, drainage running away from the house, and the layout of the risers. None of that is visible afterward, which is exactly why it gets skipped. We do this work throughout Savannah and out toward Pooler, on the same terms in every neighborhood we serve. Call for a free estimate on your steps, stoops or landings.
We walk the existing steps and look at what is failing: settlement cracks, a stoop pulling away from the house, treads worn round at the nose. We measure total rise and run, check the door threshold height, and find where water currently drains. Photos and dimensions come back with us.
Our estimate lists riser and tread dimensions, slab thickness, reinforcement, finish, and the demolition included. If your project needs a permit, we handle that paperwork before scheduling. Call for a free estimate. Nothing gets ordered or torn out until you have read the scope and agreed to it.
Old steps come out in pieces, hauled off the same day where access allows. We excavate below the frost-free bearing depth, compact graded aggregate in lifts, and slope the subgrade away from the foundation. Poor compaction under a stoop is the most common reason steps settle and crack.
Forms get braced hard, because concrete pushes and a bowed riser stays bowed forever. Landings carry rebar on chairs or wire mesh, with dowels drilled and epoxied into the foundation so the stoop moves with the house. Concrete installation runs in one continuous pour where possible.
Treads get a broom finish for grip, edges tooled, nosings rounded so they do not chip. We cure the concrete rather than letting it dry fast, which is what causes surface crazing. Then we walk it with you, the same as we would on driveways, sidewalks or a concrete driveway.
Two front stoops that look alike from the street can price out very differently, and most of the reasons are visible before anyone pours anything. What has to come out first, how close a truck can get, how much steel and thickness the steps actually call for, and where water runs once the landing is in: those four things move a number more than anything else. We price the same way in Savannah, Georgia, and in Pooler, Bluffton and Hilton Head Island.
| What changes the price | Which way | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Old brick, block or concrete steps that have to be broken out | costs more | Demolition and haul-off are their own labor before a single form goes up. |
| Bare ground at the door with nothing to remove | costs less | We form, tie steel and pour without a separate demo day. |
| A driveway or apron a mixer can back onto | costs less | Concrete runs from the chute into the forms with no second handling. |
| Wheelbarrow runs from the street, or a pump truck | costs more | Every yard gets moved twice, which adds crew and time on a small pour. |
| Rebar and footings below grade instead of wire mesh | costs more | Steps and landings carry load at the edges, so they need more steel than flatwork does. |
| A landing that pitches back toward the door | costs more | We rebuild the base to fall away from the house, and sometimes add drainage. |
| Stamped or colored finish over a broom finish | costs more | Color, mats and sealing mean more material and a return trip to finish. |
| A stoop on a house near the 1971 median build year | costs more | Footings that old often need rebuilding rather than pouring over. |
Compare bids on what disappears after the pour. Ask each contractor for slab thickness, whether reinforcement is rebar or wire mesh, how deep the footings go, and whether demolition and haul-off sit inside the number or get added later. A bid that names none of that is not cheaper. It is just vaguer.
Yes. We drill and epoxy rebar dowels into the existing porch wall or slab so the new steps and the old structure move as one piece instead of drifting apart at the joint. Before we set anything, we open up enough of the existing face to see what we are anchoring into. If that material is soft or crumbling, the dowels go deeper, into concrete that still holds.
Yes, once a flight gets past a small number of risers. The requirement covers more than the rail itself: graspable shape, mounting height, and how the ends return. Even on a low stoop that falls under the threshold, we form the steps so a rail can be anchored cleanly later. It is far easier to plan for one before the pour than to retrofit into finished concrete.
Yes, sometimes. When the core is sound and the damage is surface spalling along the nosings, we saw out the loose material back to solid concrete and rebuild the edges with a bonded repair mix. When the rebar inside has rusted and swelled, or the whole set has settled and cracked through, patching buys a short stretch of time and nothing more. We say which one you have after we look.
Foot traffic comes first. Once the surface is hard enough that a thumb leaves no mark, usually the day after the pour, you can walk on them carefully. Concrete keeps gaining strength for weeks after that, so keep ladders, furniture and heavy loads off early. Forms and bracing stay in place until we come back and pull them, not before.
Texture and drainage do most of the work. We finish the treads with a broom pass run across the walking direction, which gives grip when the surface is wet, and pitch each tread slightly forward so water sheds rather than standing. Keep deicing salt off new concrete through its first winter. Salt drives chloride into a surface that has not finished hardening. Sand does the same job without the damage.
The code caps how tall a riser can be, sets a minimum tread depth, and holds every riser in a flight within a tight tolerance of the others. Uniformity is what gets flagged most often, because one odd step at the top or bottom is what people trip on. We measure total height from finished landing to finished grade, divide it into equal risers, and lay out the run from there.