Concrete Repair in Lake Hallie, Wisconsin.

Lake Hallie's public works title covers driveways and culverts and sets out no sidewalk construction or repair program of its own, so a walk in front of a village property sits with the owner under the state statute. Surfacing the strip of village right of way between a private drive and the hard surface of the street takes a permit from the Road Superintendent on the village's own form, filed before anything is put down. The ordinance calls that a permissive use, so if the village reconstructs the right of way the surface an owner installed can be taken out with no claim against the village, and the culvert and the replacement hard surface are the applicant's cost either way. The retail along Commercial Boulevard is where the entrances and aprons carrying real traffic are.

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.