Concrete Repair in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Eau Claire replaces sidewalk panels on condition rather than age, and a concern turned in by December 31 goes on the list of potential repairs for the following construction year. Once an order is served the owner has 20 days to decide between the city's contractor and his own, and the cost is payable in full or in ten annual installments at 6 percent. Work in the right of way is a separate track: Engineering issues the permit for anything cut into a street, alley or public place, and a drive apron has to be surfaced with concrete wherever the street already has curb and gutter. On a commercial frontage the piece that usually goes first is that apron, because the plow wing drops at the gutter line and everything thrown off the street lands on it.

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.