Solocrete General Contracting

This review is long overdue but one I’ve been eager to provide. First of all, I would highly recommend Solocrete to anyone and everyone who’s looking for concrete work. Interestingly enough, I was at a mining conference in downtown Toronto and mentioned some of the renovations I was doing in and out of the house and a colleague said he had a great concrete guy if I was looking for stamped. I told him we had ours done by Solocrete and he chuckled as he had used John about six year ago at his home.
John was very patient with me. I had him come out twice to provide a quote because after the initial quote which was for a white concrete (sidewalk look) walkways and rear patio, I decided to ask for stamped concrete and included the driveway.
Pricing was reasonable. Certainly not the most expensive but not the cheapest either.
John and Idila also patiently worked with me in the colour selection. He met me at his business in Brampton to go over the numerous shades of gray he had. He also made his recommendations based on his experience with what they looked like in the sun and in the shade. Afterwards, Idila provided me with about a half dozen locations where they had done work with my colour selection so that I could see a complete job. One homeowner happened to be home when I visited and they were happy to show me the backyard and spent about 10 minutes sharing their experience and tips with me.
The framing wasn’t perfect the first time, but it ended up being close to it. There were a couple of places around the house where the framer graded it incorrectly towards the house. They were remedied before any concrete was poured.
The staff work hard and John monitors them closely as he dropped by every now and then to see how things were progressing. I appreciated the hands on approach John takes … he actually works as hard as his crew when he’s on site.
Another pleasure was dealing with Idila. All my questions and concerns were acknowledged and followed up on in a timely manner. They make a very good team.
90% of the concrete looks amazing. The cuts are good, the borders look good and I’ve had plenty of compliments from my neighbours. There are a couple sections that look pitted but I don’t think there’s a remedy for that at this point. I don’t really notice them anymore.
Over the winter, much of the sealer has stripped and there’s been some cracking where my window wells have expanded. I’m not concerned that these aren’t matters that will be remedied by the Solocrete team.
Overall, I would highly recommend John and Solocrete and would not bother looking anywhere else if a need or opportunity arose.
As I’ve said before, John & Idila, I’d be happy to be a reference for quality of work and colour selection if people want to drop by!

John (the owner) is extremely unprofessional and rude — to customers and his employees. I met this person later on in the project and if met during the sales cycle; I would not have gone with this company.
My concrete walkway had cracked in multiple places during/​after its first winter season due to poor workmanship. Workers apparently did not place and compact enough gravel. One year later John came back to repair as per warranty admitting it was an error on SoloCrete’s part. Surprisingly, he also told me to fix water draining from the eaves as he suddenly «suspected» that was also the cause of the cracks (even though he himself (personally) put one PVC pipe into the ground to allow for adequate drainage assuring no cracks). His fix to the situation was to tell me to install more underground PVC pipes to allow for further drainage. My thoughts, a complete rookie solution as this would eventually clog and backup in time — just like his initial PVC solution. Also it seemed like a copout for someone not wanting to do the job. Not sure how he’s done business for so long but gives a typical stereotype to «shady contractor» that you see on TV getting schooled by Mike Holmes.
He eventually broke up the concrete to commence repair as per warranty and then refused to repair/​pour new concrete unless I paid him extra as he needed to rebar, add more gravel, further compact, and come back to my neighborhood with a cement truck as he had no projects at the time in the area. Complete misrepresentation and fraudulent warranty.
A concrete shed slab I requested is a whole other even further negative side of the story… Supposed to measure 12×10… Solocrete made it 11×10, even though his sales guy clearly indicated 12X10 on the invoice during initial measure… They came back, drilled huge holes in the front of the slab, put in rebar and essentially made a gigantic mess of the slab. One year later, the attachment/​band aid fix he did is broken up and a very long crack across the slab/​platform has taken place. No apologies for this whatsoever, just more negative attitude from him and his so called «secretary». Totally not a professional. and this was a $ 6000 job from a supposedly experienced company/​person. Sure it’s not a huge amount for concrete work, but it’s not a small amount either.
PLEASE STAY FAR AWAY FROM THIS CONTRACTOR.
Not worth your risk or potential aggravation dealing with this company since there are far more options out there in the GTA. NO CUSTOMER SERVICE is a serious issue. I had Essential Landscaping from Bolton come in and fix the mess and they echo that hey are surprised with the poor level of work performed. There are many concrete contractors/​vendors out there. Lesson learned.
Please don’t waste your time and hard earned dollars on this one.
I’m sure that once Solocrete discovers the internet they’ll quickly come on here to do damage control and do the usual stating that the customer was difficult, hard to work with, and they couldn’t disagree more with the review — SAVE IT SOLOCRETE.