Concrete sidewalk building in Quincy MA - a level walk that drains away from your house

Most people call us when the front walk has turned into a trip hazard or the path to the back door is a muddy track, and the first things they ask are what it'll cost and how long they'll be stepping around it. The price mostly moves with the length and width, whether an old walk has to be broken out and hauled away, how much base work the ground needs and any finish beyond a plain brushed texture. The schedule depends more on the weather in the days after the pour than on the pour day itself. If the walk meets concrete steps at the door, I'll look at those too. We're based in Quincy and work across the cities around it, and your written estimate spells out what's included for your walk.

On every walk I start by marking the layout and checking where the water goes, because a walk should carry rain away from your house, not toward it. We break out any old concrete and dig down to firm subgrade, the soil the walk will sit on, then bring in gravel and pack it hard so the walk doesn't settle along with the dirt. The forms go in with a slight fall away from the house. After the pour we give the top a broom finish, a light brushed texture that gives your shoes grip when it's wet, and cut control joints, straight grooves that give the concrete a place to crack neatly instead of wandering across the walk. Then it cures, which is the slow set it needs before it takes foot traffic. A walk depends on its base and its curing, so we don't rush either one, and we plan the pour around the forecast for the days after, not just the day itself. If the budget's tight, I'd rather you skip a fancy edge than skimp on the base, because nobody sees the base on day one but everybody sees it when the walk sinks.

A new walk often ties into other work. If it ends at a garage with a cracked or crumbling floor, it makes sense to price garage floor concrete at the same visit, and if you'd like color, a border or a pattern instead of plain gray, that's our decorative concrete work.

For sidewalks on state contract work, the state highway department's sidewalk spec calls for a gravel base placed on prepared ground and compacted thoroughly before any concrete goes in. Your front walk isn't a state job, and a newer edition may have changed the details, but it's a fair yardstick, so ask anyone you're comparing how their base stacks up against it. It's the same idea behind the base we described above.

Around Quincy we mostly replace older front walks that have heaved from frost and roots or settled into a slope toward the house, and the winters here bring salt and repeated freezing and thawing, so we set the slope and joints with that in mind. We see the same older houses and tired walks on jobs in Braintree and Weymouth, and we build them the same way.