Concrete Repair in Holmen, Wisconsin.

Holmen's ordinance puts the walk on the property owner and gives the dimensions: five feet wide, four inches deep, six inches where a driveway crosses it, and the back of the walk four inches above the top of the curb. The Village has to be told at least ten days before a walk goes in, and nobody pours public sidewalk here without permission first. The repair clock is short: 24 hours after the Director of Public Works notifies an owner about a damaged walk, the Village can do the work itself and put the cost on the next annual tax roll. Once a street has been permanently improved or repaved, no permit to open, cut or excavate it is issued for five years unless the Board of Public Works finds an emergency. The commercial frontage runs up Highways 53 and 35 through the north parks where Kwik Trip, XeteX, Dairyland and Holmen Cheese sit, and snow and ice have to be off a public walk within 48 hours of a snowfall.

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.