Concrete sidewalk building in Saratoga CA - a walk that drains, grips and stays put

Most people call when the old walk has heaved over a root, broken into chunks or holds a puddle by the front steps, or when there's no walk at all and the lawn has a worn path through it. The price moves with how long and wide the walk is, whether old concrete has to come out first, how much digging the route needs and whether it crosses your driveway. The schedule usually turns on whether the city wants a permit because the walk reaches the strip along the street, and on having good weather and ready ground for the pour. The estimate I write at your place gives you the figure for your walk.

We start by settling the route with you, because tree roots and shifting ground move a walk over time, and a better path does more than stronger concrete ever will. Then our crew strips the topsoil, roots and soft organic material and packs any dirt we disturb, so the subgrade, the ground the slab sits on, holds the walk evenly from end to end. Before the forms go in, I check where water will run so it doesn't sit in a low spot on the walk or head for the house. We pour, place and finish the concrete, and outside we give it a broom finish, a light brushed texture, because a slick troweled surface gets dangerous once it's wet. If the budget gets tight, I'll trim the finish before I trim the ground work, since nobody sees the base on day one but it decides whether the walk stays flat.

A new walk often ties into other work. If the path ends at a garage with a cracked or sunken slab, we can quote garage floor concrete so the two meet evenly. If you want color, a border or a pattern on the path, our decorative concrete work goes on the same packed base, and I'll tell you straight which finishes keep their grip in the rain.

In Saratoga, the property line usually sits 5 to 10 feet back from the edge of the street, so the strip by the curb often isn't yours, and building on it takes an encroachment permit from the city. The city always requires one to add, replace or repair a sidewalk, curb or gutter, and Saratoga Public Works asks you to check with it before pouring any concrete within 15 feet of the street's edge, since a permit may or may not apply that far in. Work in that public strip also has to be built to the city's own construction standards. We check early on what the city wants for your walk, and when a permit applies we handle the contractor's side of it, including the copy of our insurance the application needs, and help you with the parts that fall to you as the owner.

We're based in Saratoga and work across it and the cities around it, and the call we get most is a front walk lifted by a tree root or sunk where the ground was never packed. We see the same walks, and the same question about where they meet the street, on jobs in Los Gatos and Cupertino, so we start with the property line there too.