Free practice questions for the California CSLB C-8 Concrete trade exam — with a written explanation on every answer, in English, Spanish, and Russian.
The C-8 Concrete exam is the trade half of a California concrete contractor's license; the Law and Business exam is the other half. CSLB's official study guide divides it into five sections — planning and estimating, pre-placement preparation, placing and finishing, post-placement tasks, and safety — with planning and estimating the largest at about 28%. Practice it below: free, no sign-up, with a written explanation on every question.
No account needed. Pick an answer to see whether it's right and read the explanation — the same explanations you get on every question in the full course.
Every question tells you why the correct answer is correct and defines the terms it uses — so you learn the rule, not just the answer.
Questions are written from scratch against the official codes and agency publications for this exam — never copied from the real exam.
Every question and explanation is fully translated, with the English exam term kept alongside — not a shallow machine translation.
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The full C-8 Concrete course is 500 questions across 5 blocks, drawn from these five official CSLB sections.
The C-8 Concrete exam covers the work a concrete contractor actually does — planning it, forming it, placing it, finishing it, and staying safe around it. CSLB's official study guide splits the exam into five sections and publishes the weight of each. Planning and estimating is the largest at about 28%, pre-placement preparation is right behind at 27%, and safety carries 21%, so roughly three-quarters of the exam sits in those three areas. Here is what each section asks, and where candidates typically slip.
Reading plans and turning them into quantities. The official guide states that some questions require mathematical computation and that a calculator is provided, so the conversions have to be automatic: a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, not 9. The classic trap is a thickness given in inches while length and width are in feet — convert 4 inches to one-third of a foot before you multiply, or the order is off by a factor of three. Specification questions live here too, such as the code limit that keeps coarse aggregate from bridging in a narrow form.
Demolition, grading and excavating; layout and forming; drains and moisture barriers; reinforcement and embedded items. Two facts pay for themselves. California's one-call law requires notifying the regional notification center at least two working days — and not more than 14 calendar days — before you excavate, and the ticket you get back is valid for 28 days. On the embedded-items side, sill-plate anchor bolts are 1/2 inch in diameter, spaced no more than 6 feet on center, and embedded at least 7 inches; distractors routinely swap the spacing figure for the embedment figure.
Placing concrete, applying finishes, curing and testing. Mix questions are where the "partly true" option hides: air-entrained concrete for weather-exposed flatwork runs 5 to 7 percent air by volume, and the single exception — a steel-troweled garage floor down at 3 percent — applies only if the specified strength is raised to at least 4,000 psi. Finishing questions reward sequence: floating before troweling, and never sealing or troweling a surface that is still bleeding.
The smallest section, but cheap points: stains and sealers, stripping forms, repairing, grouting and caulking. The correct answer to "when can I strip?" is never a number of hours. Formwork and shores stay until the concrete has gained enough strength to carry its own weight and everything placed on it, judged against the removal conditions written into the plans and specifications.
Employee safety and job site safety, drawn from Cal/OSHA's Construction Safety Orders. The concrete-specific items dominate: protective caps over protruding rebar must present at least a 4-inch by 4-inch face, formwork and shoring must be designed for at least 100 pounds per square foot of combined live and dead load regardless of slab thickness, and a trench 4 feet or deeper needs a ladder or ramp within 25 feet of lateral travel. Respirable-silica controls for cutting and grinding cured concrete, and shade once the temperature passes 80 °F, sit here as well — the same rules you meet from the employer's side on the CSLB Law & Business exam.
You take the C-8 on a computer at a PSI testing center, closed book, with no reference materials permitted and 3.5 hours per exam — the time limit published in CSLB's Examinations FAQ. Every question is multiple choice with four choices and one BEST answer, a calculator is provided for the math, and there is no penalty for guessing, so never leave an item blank. The result is pass/fail on the spot; a failing report breaks your score out by section, and you may retake after 21 days, paying a re-examination fee to PSI, within your application's 18-month window. C-8 is one of the exams CSLB publishes in an official Spanish version, which you select when scheduling with PSI. Most first-time applicants sit the Law & Business exam as well.
The LICENA C-8 course is 500 questions across 5 blocks. At 30 questions a day that is roughly three weeks — one full pass, then a second pass concentrated on the sections you missed. Weight your time the way the exam does: planning and estimating plus pre-placement preparation are 55% of it, so if your volume math is slow, fix that before anything else. Read the explanation on every question you miss, because the exam rewords facts and memorizing answer letters carries nothing across; knowing why air content is capped at 7 percent survives any rewording. If you are chasing a second classification, the C-10 Electrical practice test is built the same way. Pair all of it with CSLB's free official C-8 study guide, and treat any product that promises a guaranteed pass as a warning sign — no honest one does.
The full 500-question C-8 Concrete bank with a written explanation on every answer, weak-area practice and a timed final exam, in EN·ES·RU. California exam-prep schools list programs from about $250 to $1,200 — this is $20/month, on your phone, cancel anytime.
Create free account The free sample above stays free. Creating an account is free — no card needed.LICENA gives you practice questions to study with. We are not an accredited school and we do not guarantee that you will pass any exam.
LICENA provides online practice only. Registration, exam scheduling and licensing are handled by the CSLB and its exam vendor PSI — not by LICENA. LICENA is not affiliated with the CSLB or PSI.