Concrete driveway building in Springfield IL - a drive that drains well through winter

Most homeowners call us once the old drive has cracked through, sunk at one corner or started holding a puddle by the garage, and by then the trouble is usually in the ground underneath rather than the surface. The price turns on the size and shape of the drive, how much old concrete and soft ground has to come out, the finish you choose and whether you need a new opening at the curb. The schedule turns on the weather, the city's permits at the street and the curing wait before you can drive on it, and a pour late in the fall needs more planning around the first freeze. When I come out, I measure the drive, look at where the water goes and write up exactly what we'll do, so you know what your figure covers before we start.

Before we dig, I walk the drive with you and note where your gutters drain out and where you'll pile snow, because one spot that stays wet can wear a drive faster than traffic does. Our crew breaks out the old concrete, digs past the soft dirt and packs a stone base over the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, so the new drive doesn't settle along with loose fill. We set the forms with a slope that carries water away from the house and garage, place rebar, the steel that holds the slab together, where the drive needs it, and order a mix suited to freezing weather. We schedule the pour to stay out of midday heat when we can, since concrete that dries too fast can leave a weak, dusty top. After a broom finish, a light texture that gives tires and boots grip on wet or icy days, we cut control joints, shallow grooves that tell the concrete where to crack as it shrinks, before the slab can crack on its own in places nobody chose. Then comes curing, the wait while the concrete gains strength, and I talk with you about how to treat the new surface through its first winter.

If the backyard needs work too, concrete patio construction uses the same dug-out base and planned drainage, with lighter loads on top. For a drive with more look than plain gray, stamped concrete services add a pattern and color, though when a budget has to give somewhere, I'd rather you spend it on the base than the finish, because the base is hidden on day one and it decides whether the drive stays flat.

On a Springfield driveway, the city's rules start where your drive meets the street. The Office of Public Works issues the curb cut and driveway permits, and any work in the right-of-way, the public strip along the street, needs a separate excavation permit before it starts, so a new or wider curb opening means paperwork before our crew can break out the old concrete there. If your drive opens onto an Interstate, a U.S. route or an Illinois state route, the Illinois Department of Transportation has to issue a permit before work starts in its right-of-way, and a copy has to stay at the job the whole time. The city also leaves soil compaction and mine subsidence research to the owner and applicant, and a permit isn't proof the ground suits the project, so if you're concerned about old mine workings under your lot, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources takes those questions at 217-782-0588. We check what the office asks for at your address and take care of the permit paperwork for our work when a permit applies, and if the office needs something from you as the owner, we'll tell you early.

On jobs around Springfield we often find older drives poured over fill that was raked level instead of dug out and packed, with a downspout emptying onto the slab and snow pushed to the same edge every winter. We fix the base and move the water rather than pour over the problem, and we see the same thing on jobs in Chatham and Decatur.