Concrete driveway building in Duluth MN - a solid base that holds up through winter

Most people call us when the old driveway has cracked through, sunk at the garage or along an edge, or holds a puddle every time it rains, and that's usually the base underneath giving up, not just the concrete. The price moves with the size of the drive, whether there's an old slab to break out and haul away, how much digging and fill the base needs, any drainage fix, the finish you pick and whether the work reaches the street. The schedule turns on the weather and on the base being ready, so I'll tell you where your job stands on both, and what you'd be paying for, when I come out for the estimate. If the garage slab is in the same shape, we can look at garage floor concrete on the same visit.

I start by looking at where water runs across your yard, because a slab that falls toward the house sends melt water at your foundation every spring. Then our crew breaks out the old concrete and digs down to firm ground instead of raking the dirt level, since a base that's only raked settles and takes the slab down with it. We pack the subgrade, the soil and gravel the slab sits on, and check that it's dry, free of frost and standing water, with no soft or muddy spots. If it isn't there yet, we move the pour date, because what's under the slab decides how the driveway holds up and I'd rather ask one more question than leave you living with a problem. We set the forms with a steady fall away from the house, add rebar, steel bars that hold the slab together if it does crack, where the job calls for it, and pour. After that we give it a broom finish, a light ridged texture so tires and boots grip on wet or icy days, cut control joints, shallow grooves that give the slab a planned place to crack, while the concrete is still fresh, and let it cure, which is the wait while it gains strength before anyone drives on it.

A driveway often comes with other work. Plenty of people redo a back slab at the same time, and concrete patio construction uses the same dug-out, packed base, so doing both together can make sense. If you'd like a pattern or color on a border or the apron, stamped concrete services can add that, but if the budget gets tight I'd cut the stamping before I'd cut the base, because nobody sees the base on day one and it's the part you'll notice years from now.

In Duluth, the end of the driveway at the street is the city's business. The city's engineering office issues permits for driveway aprons and digging in the city right-of-way, the city-owned strip along the street, and a new driveway opening there needs an approved application and an excavation permit. Only a contractor who's insured and bonded can work in that strip, so it's worth asking anyone you hire about it. For the part on your lot, permits for private property go through the city's Construction Services & Inspections office, and that's who to ask whether your driveway needs one. When a job needs a permit, we pull it and book the inspections, and if the work reaches the street we get the city side settled before we start. If you'd rather apply yourself, I'll tell you what the city will want to see from us.

On jobs here we see a lot of driveways that climb or drop to the street, with plow piles along the edges for months and salt tracked up from the road, so we take extra care with where the slope sends water and how the apron meets the street. We see the same long winters and salted streets on jobs in Hermantown and Superior, and from our base in Duluth we work in Cloquet and the cities around them too.