Concrete Sidewalk Building in Fargo ND - a flat, safe walk to your front door

Most calls start the same way. A slab has dropped or tipped, a crack keeps getting wider, or water sits on the walk after rain. Patching usually buys a season, not a fix, because the trouble is under the slab. The price moves with the length and width of the walk, how much old concrete we break out and haul away, how much work the ground needs before the pour, and any steps or tie-ins at the driveway. The schedule turns on the weather, the cure time and the city's timing if your street is part of one of its sidewalk projects. The estimate puts the scope for your walk in writing, so you know what you're getting before we start.

We take the old walk out completely instead of pouring over it, because new concrete laid on broken concrete picks up the same cracks and settling. Then we dig down to the subgrade, the soil the slab sits on, and pack a firm base so the new walk doesn't sink with loose dirt. We set the forms so the walk falls away from your house and water runs off instead of pooling at the door. We pour early in the day when we can, since midday heat leaves a weak, dusty top, and we give it a broom finish, a light texture that keeps it from getting slick. Control joints go in on time, shallow grooves cut across the walk so that when concrete cracks, it cracks there in a straight line and not across the middle. Then it cures, the wait while it gains strength, before anyone uses it. The base is the part you never see and the first thing some crews cut to save money, and it's the last place I'd cut, because a nice finish on a bad base still sinks. If the city has your address in one of its sidewalk projects, tell us when you call so we can work out the timing together.

A new walk often leads right to other worn concrete. If the slab inside your garage is cracked or sunken too, we can look at garage floor concrete on the same visit. If you'd like color or a pattern at the front entry or along a garden path, decorative concrete gives you that on the same kind of base.

In Fargo, the sidewalk next to your property sits in the city's right of way, and you, the owner, are required to install it and keep it in good repair. The City of Fargo's Engineering Services Division manages that right of way and approves the work done in it. The city also requires anyone installing or repairing sidewalk to be licensed with the city as a Sidewalk Contractor and to hold a North Dakota general contractor's license, so that's the first thing to ask anyone you're thinking of hiring. Its sidewalk specification calls for all the old concrete to come out, with none left under the new walk, which is how we'd do it anyway.

What we see on Fargo walks is what we see in West Fargo and across the river in Moorhead. Slabs have sunk or tipped, cracks wander where no joint was cut, and water sits on the walk or runs back toward the house. We fix those at the base and the joints, and we check what each city asks for before we plan the job.