Concrete Repair in Altoona, Wisconsin.

Altoona puts the walk squarely on the abutting owner, whose duty under the code is to build, repair and perpetually maintain it and to pay the entire cost. Nobody may lay, remove, replace or repair a public sidewalk in Altoona without a permit from the City Building Inspector, with notice given so the City can inspect before, during and after. An owner also loses the choice of arranging the work himself on a block the City plans to contract in the same calendar year, which is worth settling before a number goes into a budget. Driveway approaches run through the Director of Public Works on their own permit, and every approach built or altered has to be portland cement concrete.

Four things take concrete apart here, and each one goes after a different part of a property. A sidewalk panel sits on saturated ground or over a root. The water under it freezes, expands and lifts the panel. In spring the ground thaws and settles, and the panel does not go all the way back down with it, so what was flush in October is a lip in April. Then a plow blade catches that lip every storm for five months and breaks the leading edge off it. A curb takes the plow head on. The blade rides up the gutter, catches the curb face and takes the nose off in chunks. Salted slush sits in the gutter longer than anywhere else on the lot, because the gutter is where everything on the lot drains to, so the gutter is where the surface scales first. De-icer does the same thing to flat concrete. Chloride pulls water into the surface and runs more freeze and thaw cycles through it in a season than the weather would on its own. The mortar skin comes off in flakes and the aggregate stands proud. The approach at the street is a joint between two slabs that belong to different people. The street sits on a road section and a deep base; the drive sits on whatever was there. Frost gets under the shallower one first, the apron cracks along the gutter line, and that crack takes water into the base under both of them.