Concrete Repair in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

La Crosse doesn't bill the abutting owner for the public walk. The city says it levies no special assessment for either new or replacement sidewalk and pays for installation out of the capital improvement budget, which is the choice Wis. Stat. 66.0907(6) leaves open to a council. Engineering inspects the walk in the right of way and not the sidewalk on private property, so the walk across the front of a building and the walk in the lot behind it are two different jobs. An owner who wants a public walk replaced has his contractor apply for an Excavation permit and meet the city's bonding and insurance requirements, and the city wants 48 hours' notice before a pour so the forms can be inspected and approved. Any work in the right of way needs a permit, and the right of way here takes in the street, the boulevard and the public sidewalk beside it, with Engineering approving grades, elevations and cross slopes against the city's own standard specifications and detail drawings.

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.