Concrete Contractors in Fargo, ND

Concrete contractors in Fargo work on some of the hardest ground in the country. The city sits on the flat bed of glacial Lake Agassiz, and a Fargo Forum report on local soils quotes retired NDSU geology professor Donald Schwert calling the Red River Valley "among the worst of construction conditions in the United States." Below the black topsoil are thick layers of plastic clay that swell when they get wet and shrink when they dry out. A driveway, patio or sidewalk here has to be built for ground that moves, and then for a winter that averages about 43 days at or below zero. That is what we plan for on every job.

What the clay and cold do to concrete

Clay that swells in a wet spring and shrinks in a dry August lifts and drops slabs a little at a time. Panels tip toward the house, joints open up, and low spots start to hold water. Then winter adds freeze-thaw cycles. Water that sits in a crack or in the surface of the concrete freezes, expands and breaks a little more off each time. Fargo's January average low is about 1 degree, and the city gets a little over 51 inches of snow a year, so there is plenty of water and plenty of freezing.

Streets get a sand and salt mixture from city trucks, and that brine rides into garages and onto driveways on tires. Salt does not hurt sound, properly cured concrete much, but it speeds up flaking (scaling) on surfaces that were finished wet, poured without air entrainment, or never sealed.

Our build standard for Red River Valley ground

• Get off the clay. Organic topsoil and soft material come out, and crushed gravel is compacted in their place before any form goes up.
• Order the right mix. Exterior pours use air-entrained concrete; the microscopic voids it carries relieve the pressure when absorbed water freezes.
• Match steel and depth to the load. Rebar on chairs, extra depth where vehicles turn and park, and dowels wherever fresh concrete butts against an existing slab.
• Plan where meltwater goes. Every slab falls away from foundations and garage doors so April melt heads for the yard or the street.
• Decide where it cracks. Joints are laid out on paper and cut or tooled on schedule, giving shrinkage a straight line to follow.
• Cure it, then seal it. We keep the surface from drying too fast and hand you written first-winter care notes.

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Old concrete, new neighborhoods

Fargo's housing spans more than a century. Census figures summarized by Point2Homes put the median Fargo home at 1991, with about 8 percent built before 1940 and roughly a quarter built between 1950 and 1979. Near downtown and around NDSU, plenty of driveways, alley garage aprons, front walks and steps are decades old and have taken a long run of winters. Since the mid-1980s most growth has pushed south and southwest toward newer subdivisions and West Fargo, where the concrete is younger but can sink where it crosses backfill around a foundation.

Those two kinds of property call for different work. Older homes tend to need tear-out and replacement, sometimes with a wider driveway or new steps at the same time. Newer homes more often want a patio added, a slab for a shed or a third stall, or a few sunken panels dealt with before they get worse.

City sidewalks and approaches

North Dakota law makes property owners responsible for building and maintaining the sidewalk next to their lot. The City of Fargo's Engineering Department inspects sidewalks and marks panels for replacement when a crack, a lip or pits reach a quarter inch, or when a panel slopes more than a quarter inch per foot or holds water. Fargo also requires anyone installing or repairing sidewalk in the right of way to be licensed with the City as a Sidewalk Contractor and to hold a North Dakota contractor's license, and unlicensed work can bring a $500 fine. Residential driveways must be between 9 and 30 feet wide where they cross the sidewalk line. We check these rules for your address before quoting, and we tell you which parts of the job fall under city rules.

Our services

New work covers driveways, backyard patios, stamped and colored concrete, front walks and steps, and garage and shed slabs. Repair work covers sunken panels, wide cracks, flaking surfaces and broken steps, along with full replacement when a slab is past saving. It all begins with a site visit and a written price. Call (701) 773-3206 or request a free estimate online.

Our area pages cover Fargo itself, including Downtown, Oak Grove and Osgood, plus West Fargo, Horace, Harwood, Reile's Acres, Frontier, Oxbow, Mapleton, Casselton, Kindred and Argusville on the North Dakota side, and Moorhead, Dilworth, Glyndon, Sabin, Hawley and Barnesville in Minnesota. Each city sets its own sidewalk, approach and permit rules, so we look up the ones for your address before we quote.