What kind of concrete work is common in Chickasaw County?

The plants bring most of it. Furniture, polyfoam, PVC, and steel shops need worn slabs repaired, joints filled, equipment pads set, and new floors poured. A new plant floor is often a 4,000 PSI slab, finished flat enough for line and forklift traffic to ACI 302.1R. Farms add shop slabs 6 to 8 inches thick with #4 rebar. Homes in Houston and Okolona get the standard 4-inch driveway and patio.

How does Chickasaw County soil affect a slab?

Chickasaw County sits on Mississippi Coastal Plain soil in the Yalobusha and Tombigbee river basins. The ground holds clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. A slab that lasts starts with dirt packed to about 95 percent Proctor density, a standard test for how tight the soil is, under 4 to 6 inches of base. We check every slab before a coating goes down. If it's an older slab, a low lot near a creek bottom, or a floor where a coating already failed, we test it for moisture first. Damp rising through a slab is what lifts a coating.

Can a worn plant floor in Houston or Okolona be repaired instead of replaced?

Often, yes. Slab repair and joint filling are a steady part of our plant work in Chickasaw County. We fix the failed spots, fill the joints, and bring the floor back to ACI 302.1R flatness for forklift and line traffic. When a section is past saving, the new pour usually goes in as a 4,000 PSI slab.

Concrete in Chickasaw county, MS

Q: Which Chickasaw County towns does Bel Covo serve?

We cover Houston and Okolona, the county's two joint seats, and each has its own page. Houston, with about 3,544 people, is home to the furniture plants along Highway 8. Okolona, with about 2,638, sits on the old Mobile and Ohio rail line on the east side of the county. The town links on this page go to both.

Concrete across Chickasaw County

Concrete in Chickasaw County covers the 2 county seats, Houston and Okolona, plus the farm country around Houlka. We pour the slab, and we handle the finish too. That can mean grinding, coating, or sealing a driveway, a shop or barn slab, a garage floor, or a polished floor, all on one schedule.

About 17,100 people live in Houston, Okolona, Houlka, and Woodland. Two things set the county apart. It has two county seats, Houston and Okolona, and a furniture industry big enough to give it one of the highest shares of factory jobs of any county in the country. So more of the concrete here goes into plant floors and equipment pads than in most rural counties this size.

Which Chickasaw County towns does Bel Covo serve?

Houston and Okolona share the county seat. The split goes back to floods on the east side of the county, which made the first seat hard to reach. Houston, with about 3,544 people, is home to the furniture plants. Okolona, with about 2,638, grew into a business town after the Mobile and Ohio Railroad reached it in 1859.

Houston, joint county seat and home to a 1.2-million-square-foot upholstery plant
Okolona, the second county seat, which grew up on the 1859 Mobile and Ohio rail line

The open country between them is in our North Mississippi coverage too.

One team for Houston and Okolona

Our North Mississippi team covers the whole county, from Houston on Highway 8 east to Okolona on the old rail line. It all runs on one calendar. A plant floor patch in Houston and a farm shop pad outside Okolona get booked together, so if you own sites in both towns, you don’t have to line up a different contractor for each one.

What does concrete work look like across Chickasaw County?

The plants and the farms sort the work into five kinds of jobs:

Industrial and plant floors. The furniture and wood plants need worn slabs repaired, joints filled, and new floors poured. A new floor is usually a 4,000 PSI slab, finished to ACI 302.1R flatness so forklifts and lines run smooth.
Equipment pads and shop slabs. Polyfoam, PVC, and steel shops set machine bases and tank pads 6 to 8 inches thick. The steel is a #4 or #5 rebar mat sized to the heavy spots, not a stock home spec.
Farm shop slabs. Cotton, corn, soybean, and catfish farms drive grain carts and equipment onto shop floors. Those get 6 to 8 inches of concrete with #4 rebar on a packed base.
Home driveways and patios. Neighborhoods in Houston and Okolona get the standard 4-inch slab on a packed base, and our driveways run $6.96 to $16.43 a square foot before the drive cost. Outdoor pours carry 4 to 7 percent entrained air, tiny bubbles that give freezing water room, for the 45 to 60 freeze-thaw cycles a North Mississippi winter brings.
Garage and shop coatings. Homes and light commercial buildings get epoxy and polyaspartic coatings, 4 to 20 mils thick, over a slab we’ve ground down to clean, rough concrete.

What soil and rock sit under Chickasaw County?

Chickasaw County sits on the Mississippi Coastal Plain, in the Yalobusha and Tombigbee river basins. The land rolls, and the soil is rich but full of clay, with no hard rock near the surface. The county has no limestone quarries. So local ready-mix plants use Coastal Plain chert gravel and sand for the rock in their concrete. For stronger mixes, they bring in crushed limestone by truck or rail from north Alabama or Tennessee.

On clay like this, a slab lives or dies on what’s under it. We pack the dirt to about 95 percent Proctor density and lay 4 to 6 inches of base, so water drains off and the weight spreads out. Chert gravel has one more catch. Over time it can react with the cement and crack a slab from inside. That’s called alkali-silica reaction. Good plants head that off with Class F fly ash before any polish work.

Our concrete durability guide shows how the mix and the prep last for decades.

See what your Chickasaw County concrete costs

Tell us the square footage, how the slab gets used, and what the site is like, anywhere in Chickasaw County. The quote tool prices it in about two minutes.

Price your project

Rather talk it through? Call our North Mississippi team at 662-356-3528.