Concrete Repair in Tomah, Wisconsin.

Tomah's excavation permit covers the sidewalk and the curb and gutter, not just the street, and it comes from the Director of Public Works and Utilities or the Building Inspector. The city sets a floor on how the concrete goes back in: six inches of concrete over six inches of three-quarter-inch crushed aggregate, or match what was there, whichever is more. Past nine square feet the city does the right-of-way restoration itself and bills the permit holder for it. Approval can take ten business days, the permit runs three months from the date it's approved, and there's an added charge for opening ground between November 1 and April 15. The big campuses are the VA Medical Center on 174 acres off East Veterans Street and Western Technical College on East Milwaukee Street, with the retail out on West McCoy Boulevard.

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.