Backyard Entertaining Slabs on the Tablelands: What to Decide Before You Pour

Short answer: decide how you will use the space, pick a finish that suits the house and the weather, and make sure the quote covers the base, the drainage and the joints. On the Tablelands, what is under a backyard slab and where the water goes in a storm matter as much as how it looks on day one.

A backyard slab is the room you use most

A good entertaining area changes how a house gets used. The table comes outside, the barbecue has a proper home, and the kids have somewhere flat to ride that is not the driveway. For a lot of Tablelands homes, a backyard slab ends up being the most used room of the house, even without a roof.

It is also a job that can come together fast. On one of our jobs, a bare backyard at a blue-render home became a wide entertaining slab, poured, screeded and finished in one day.

Start with how you will use it

Before you think about finishes, think about the space.

• What goes on it. The outdoor table and chairs, the barbecue, a few pot plants, room to walk around them. Lay it out on the grass with a hose or some string and live with it for a weekend.
• How you get to it. Where the back door is, where people will walk from, and whether it needs to join up with a path, a patio roof or the driveway.
• Sun and shade. Where the afternoon sun lands in summer, and whether a roof or shade sail might go over it later.
• Access on the day. A concrete truck, and sometimes a pump, needs to get close. Gates, fences, soft ground and anything overhead all count.

We look at the site and the access on the free quote visit, so bring your ideas and we will talk them through on the spot.

Pick the finish

The finish is where a backyard slab gets its character. Here is how the options compare.

• Plain concrete. Clean, classic and cost-effective. Always a solid choice.
• Exposed aggregate. The top is washed back to reveal the stone in the mix. It is slip-resistant, very durable, hides marks and copes well with the Tablelands wet. It is our most-requested finish.
• Coloured. Through-coloured to match the home, so the slab looks like it belongs to the house.
• Stencilled. Patterns that mimic pavers or tile.
• Decorative borders. Aggregate or pebble bands that frame the slab and help with drainage.

Decorative finishes can be sealed if you want to. We walk through the pros, costs and maintenance of each finish on the quote visit, so you can pick the look that suits the place.

What is underneath matters most

A slab lives or dies on what is underneath it and how the joints are cut. A backyard slab gets the same treatment we give a driveway:

• proper base prep and compaction before any pour
• correct mesh or rebar reinforcement for the load
• expansion joints sized for Tablelands heat
• drainage planning for the wet season
• control joints cut early and in the right places

The ground matters here too. Malanda red soil behaves differently from the lighter ground out past Walkamin, and Shane knows the difference.

Where does the water go?

This is the question to ask before anything else gets decided. A backyard slab sits right next to the house, and in a Tablelands storm a lot of water has to go somewhere. Our slabs are specced for wet-season drainage and dry-season expansion, which means planning the falls so water runs away from the house and off the slab, not into the back door or under the walls.

If you are comparing quotes, check that drainage is actually mentioned. It is the part that costs the most to fix later.

How the job runs

From first call to clean-up, here is what to expect:

• a free on-site quote, with a quote back within 48 hours and a start date in writing
• site prep and formwork
• reinforcement, then the pour, usually in a single day
• finishing, whether that is hand-finishing, an exposed-aggregate wash or stencil work
• cure and clean-up, with joints cut and the site left clean

Get it in before summer

The dry season books out fast, and the wet makes scheduling harder. If you want the slab down and cured before the summer gatherings, now is the time to get it quoted. If the timing runs into the wet, we plan around the forecast, with early starts when the job calls for it.

We pour backyard slabs, driveways, house slabs, shed slabs and decorative concrete across the Atherton Tablelands, from Malanda to Atherton, Yungaburra, Tolga, Herberton, Millaa Millaa and Ravenshoe. Crest is Malanda-based, not driving up from Cairns, so we know the ground you are pouring on.

Frequently asked questions