Concrete sidewalk building in Moses Lake WA - a front walk built on a solid base

If your front walk has a sunken section, a crack you keep stepping over or water sitting on it after the sprinklers run, the fix is usually tearing it out and pouring new, sometimes along with the concrete steps at the end of it. The price mostly turns on how long and wide the walk is, how much old concrete comes out, how much base work the ground needs, and whether the job reaches the curb or gutter, which changes who's allowed to do that part. The schedule turns on the city's permit and on the weather, since fresh concrete needs time to cure before it freezes. I check with the city about the right-of-way part before I price anything, and the written estimate spells out the scope so you can hold it up against other bids.

Our crew breaks out the old walk and hauls it off, then digs down to the subgrade, the dirt the slab sits on, and lays and packs a base so the new walk isn't resting on loose fill that settles with the dirt. We set the forms with a slight fall away from your house so water runs off the walk instead of toward the foundation. We pour early in the day rather than in midday heat, because concrete that dries too fast ends up with a weak, dusty top. Then we give it a broom finish, a light brushed texture that gives shoes some grip, and cut control joints, shallow grooves that tell the slab where to crack, on time so any cracks land in the grooves and not across the middle. If the budget is tight, cut the fancy edging before you cut the base. Nobody sees the base on day one, but it's what decides whether your walk stays flat.

Most of the walk in front of a Moses Lake house sits in the city's right of way, the strip of public land along the street, so the city's construction standards decide how it's built, not just what looks right from the porch. The city requires a permit before any work in the right of way, and that covers sidewalks, curb, gutter and driveway approaches. Its standards start from the state transportation department's specifications with the city's own changes, and on a small job without plans the walk has to meet whatever's in effect when the permit is issued. Before it issues that permit, the city checks that the contractor and every sub hold a current Washington contractor's license and a current city business license endorsement through the state Department of Revenue. Any work on the curb, gutter or street itself has to be done by a licensed and bonded contractor, so ask whoever you hire for both if your job touches the curb. When a permit is needed, we handle the application or help you with yours, and we build to what the city decides.

We're based in Moses Lake, and most of the front-walk calls we get here come down to a section that's dropped beside the driveway approach or one that's lifted and cracked. Since the approach falls under the same right-of-way permit rule, we look at where the two meet before we lay out the new walk. We do the same frontage work in Ephrata, Quincy and other cities around the area, and there too I check with the city or county office that covers the property before pricing.