Two offices, one slab: permits for concrete contractors in Spring Lake
Start with the town. Its Inspections Department enforces the North Carolina building codes inside town limits, reviews plans, and issues permits for houses, garages, carports, decks and storage buildings. Permit applications and inspection requests go through the town's online customer portal, which the Inspections Department page describes as a new process that needs an account.
Cumberland County helps the town complete some inspections, but the town says every one gets scheduled through the town office, not the county's. Planning is shared. The town has no full-time planning director, so the county planning department handles most planning items. You can end up talking to both offices.
The town's pages don't spell out a driveway or flatwork rule, and we won't guess at one. We tell you who to call, then put the answer in the written estimate. The wider rundown is in our permits guide.
Garage, carport and workshop slabs: strength, thickness and the town's permit
The town lists garages, carports, decks and storage buildings among the structures its Inspections Department permits, so an add-on slab for any of them starts with a permit conversation. The spec comes next. The 2018 NC Residential Code sets a floor slab on the ground at no less than 3 1/2 inches thick, and garage floors and carport slabs exposed to weather call for 3,000 psi concrete with air entrainment, as Table R402.2 shows. The code excuses garages and other unheated accessory buildings from the plastic vapor retarder that goes under interior slabs.
Now the price. A 24 by 24 garage slab is 576 square feet, which at $7 to $12 per square foot comes to $4,032 to $6,912 for a reinforced slab. A smaller shed pad hits a job minimum. On a bigger project, ask the Inspections office whether your slab needs an inspection before the pour. We'll put the answer in writing with your estimate.
Our slab page for the town breaks down thickness, reinforcement and joints, and the slab service page covers sizes and finishes.




