Concrete Patios & Outdoor Spaces in Smithville, MO

A Smithville walkout patio sits at the low point of a sloping lakeside lot, so it catches the water the rest of the yard sheds toward it. The way to keep it dry is decided before the pour: intercept that runoff above the slab, break the pad cleanly from the foundation, and give it positive drainage to daylight. Done right, the lower patio stays dry and level on Clay County's silty clay.

A lot of Smithville's homes around Smithville Lake — out in Paradise Pointe and Eagle View — are walkout ranches, where the main deck stands overhead and the finished concrete patio tucks in below at the base of the grade. That spot is the hardest place on the property to keep dry: the whole backyard drains to it, the deck sheds rain onto it, and it sits tight against the foundation wall. Pour a slab there without planning the water and it ponds, stains, and pushes moisture back at the house. The rest of this page is how we build one that doesn't.

A walkout patio butts right up against the house, and the two move differently — the foundation is anchored deep, the slab rides the top few feet of clay that swell and shrink with the seasons. Tie them together and the lighter slab cracks along the wall. We set a full-depth isolation joint where the patio meets the foundation so the pad floats free and any movement opens along that planned line instead of tearing the slab or working against the wall.

The walkout door sets the other critical grade. The finished threshold elevation sits a safe step below the sill with the ground falling away from the opening, so water sheds off the pad and never backs toward the door in a hard rain. On a lower patio, where the whole slab sits below grade on three sides, getting that step and that fall right is the difference between a dry doorway and water at the threshold every storm.

Smithville sits on Clay County's Wymore-Ladoga silty clay, which takes on water through a wet spring and gives it back over a dry August, moving the ground under a slab a little every season. We control where that movement shows by cutting contraction joint lines about a quarter of the slab's depth deep and spacing them two to three times the slab thickness apart in feet — a four-inch pad gets a line every eight to twelve feet — so no panel is big enough to crack itself.

Where a walkout patio wraps an inside corner — around a bump-out, a stair, or an L in the house — a re-entrant corner throws a crack off that point unless a control line runs through it, so we route a joint to it every time. And because the low, downhill edge of a lower patio carries itself over ground that shrinks back in a dry spell, we thicken and lock it with a restraint point so the edge doesn't drop away from the slab. The same base and mix we pour under patios in Liberty and Kearney goes in here, detailed for a walkout lot.

Most patios in Smithville need a permit through City Hall, and on a lake-area or sloped lot the drainage side of the plan can draw an extra look — the city reviews how a lower patio and its interception move water so runoff isn't dumped onto a neighbor or toward the lake. We handle the permit and lay the drainage out to clear that review the first time. A roofed or attached cover over the patio gets a closer read against setbacks and lot coverage.

Smithville sits in Clay County off US-169 and MO-92, so the soil and frost rules are Missouri's — MoDNR guidance and a 36-inch frost depth we carry the footings and the compacted base below. It's a straight run north for us from Independence, easy to get out to walk your lot, read the grade, and give you a written number before anything starts.