Concrete Contractors in Lafayette, IN

Concrete Contractors Lafayette builds and fixes the concrete around Lafayette, Indiana homes, along with West Lafayette and the smaller towns in Tippecanoe County and the counties next door. It is the flatwork you walk and drive on: new driveways, back patios, stamped surfaces, front walks and porch steps, floors for garages and sheds, and repairs to slabs that have split, dropped or begun to peel. This is Lafayette, IN, on the Wabash, not the Lafayette in Louisiana or Colorado, and the advice on this site is written for this valley's winters, its wet soils and its older houses.

Why outdoor concrete fails here

Lafayette's winters are not brutal, and that is the trouble. Normals for the Lafayette 8 S weather station put the average January low near 18°F and the January high near 33°F. By March the lows sit around 30°F while highs reach about 49°F. A slab here crosses the freezing line again and again, sometimes twice in one day. Each time, water held in the surface pores turns to ice, swells and pries at the cement paste. Enough cycles turn a smooth finish rough and pitted.

Brine adds to it. A WLFI report on the Lafayette Street Department describes crews pretreating roads with a 23.3% salt brine before snow arrives, and the city's snow-removal page says salting begins on its 12 snow routes once snow or ice starts to build up. Tires and plows carry that salt onto aprons and walks, and salty water lingers on the surface, which gives it more chances to freeze. The defenses are well known in the trade:

• Entrained air in the mix. Microscopic voids spread through the concrete leave ice somewhere to expand besides the surface.
• Stone underneath that drains. A compacted gravel layer keeps water from pooling below the slab and lifting it when it freezes.
• Joints cut on a plan. Every slab shrinks and cracks somewhere; joints at the right spacing and depth decide where.
• A slow, damp cure. A top layer that dries out early stays weak, and weak paste is what salt eats first.
• Penetrating sealer once cured, renewed every few years.

Wet ground and drainage

Much of the land around Lafayette is glacial till plain. The USDA describes the Toronto soil series, mapped on till plains in west-central Indiana, as somewhat poorly drained, with a perched water table half a foot to two feet down in fall and spring. The Drummer series, found in northwestern Indiana, is listed as poorly drained, with its seasonal high water table near the surface at some point between November and June. Those months overlap the time frost is working in and out of the ground. Saturated, fine soil under a slab is what lifts it in January and lets it sink unevenly in May. So before any forms go in, we trace the water: downspouts, yard slope, low corners by the garage and the edge of the street. The depth of stone and the finished grade come from that, not from a stock number.

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Old neighborhoods, newer subdivisions

Lafayette was platted in 1825, and parts of it show their age. Census survey figures summarized by Point2Homes give a median construction year of 1971 for the city's housing, and 17.6% of it dates from before 1940. In older areas such as Ninth Street Hill, Highland Park, Perrin and Centennial, it is common to find sidewalks, porch steps and narrow drives that have been in place for decades: squares tipped up by tree roots, stoops pulling away from the house, drives poured thinner than anyone would pour today. West Lafayette's housing is younger, with a median construction year of 1992, and its typical problems differ: garage aprons that have dropped, patios set on fill nobody compacted, and two-car drives that need a third lane.

Old or new, the first decision is the same: save the slab or replace it. Raising and patching suit concrete that is still sound but has settled. Wide cracks, broken edges and flaking across most of the surface usually mean the slab has reached the end, and patching only delays the bill.

Permits and work near the street

The rules change from one city to the next. West Lafayette requires a right-of-way permit from its City Engineering Department for construction in the public right of way, sidewalks included, and work may not begin until the permit is issued. On its Contractors Corner page, the City of Lafayette says a permit is needed any time soil is disturbed between the sidewalk and the street, and it sends questions to the City Engineer's office. Shadeland's building permit checklist includes a driveway permit approved by the town. For your address, we find out which of these apply and take care of the paperwork before a pour is scheduled.

What a quote from us looks like

It comes after a visit, it is in writing, and every part of the job has its own line. The choices that change the price, such as thickness, steel, finish and sealer, are spelled out, so you can hold our quote next to another one and compare item by item. To set up a time, call (765) 522-7909 or use the form.

Inside Lafayette we work everywhere from the older blocks around downtown, Ninth Street Hill, Perrin and Highland Park to the edges of the city, and across the river in West Lafayette. Elsewhere in Tippecanoe County we cover Wea Township, Battle Ground, Dayton, Shadeland, Clarks Hill and Otterbein. Farther out are Brookston and Monticello in White County, Delphi and Flora in Carroll County, Frankfort, Rossville and Mulberry in Clinton County, Crawfordsville and Linden in Montgomery County, Attica and Covington in Fountain County, Williamsport in Warren County, and Fowler and Oxford in Benton County. Every one of those places handles driveways and sidewalks at the street its own way, so the rules for your address get checked before anything is scheduled.