Concrete Repair

Concrete Repair in Gurnee, IL

Individual slabs lifted out and replaced, the strip at the street rebuilt, steps and paths brought back to level. Plus an honest opinion on whether yours is worth doing.

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Almost every repair call starts the same way: something has been getting slowly worse and the owner wants to know whether it is serious yet. Answering that is the first thing that happens when we come out, and it costs nothing regardless of what the answer turns out to be.

Work we take on

• Failed slabs, cut out square and re-poured against whatever stays.
• Aprons at the street, rebuilt to the standard your village sets.
• Scaled and worn surfaces, where enough sound concrete remains beneath.
• Steps, porches and landings that have cracked or dropped at one end.
• Raised edges in paths and walks that have turned into a trip.
• Broken slab edges at a garage or workshop door.

Where we stop

• No lifting or mudjacking. An intact slab sitting low needs raising, and that is a different trade. We say so rather than quoting a tear-out.
• Flatwork only. Drives, patios, walks, pads, steps. No foundations, no structures.
• No oversold replacements. Lake County is small and word travels; selling a rebuild to somebody who needed two panels would cost us more than it made.

Two things that settle it

Before anyone visits, look for a height difference. Worn concrete that is still level is a surface problem and often repairable; concrete where one part now sits above another is a ground problem, and no work on the top of a slab addresses what is under it. Then count the slabs, because the arithmetic turns against repair sooner than the driveway looks like it should.

Both are set out properly, with the measurements to take, in repair or replace your concrete driveway.

What makes one repair cost more than another

• How many slabs. The first one carries the crew, the saw and the disposal. The second and third are far cheaper per slab than the first, which is why counting them matters more than measuring them.
• Whether the base has moved. Putting right what sits under a slab is the part that makes a repair last, and how much of it is needed is rarely visible until the old concrete is up.
• Access for the equipment and the waste. A front drive is easy. A back path reached through a side gate is a different day.
• Whether the apron is in it. Explained below, and it affects the timetable more than the invoice.
• How closely it has to match. Picking up the finish direction and joint lines of what stays takes longer than pouring a plain panel.

When the trouble is at the street

A repair behind your property line and a repair on the apron are different jobs on paper even when they look identical on the ground.

The apron sits on Village land, so rebuilding it means an application, the bond and insurance the Village requires a contractor to carry, and two inspections before anything is signed off. None of it is difficult and all of it is ours to handle, but it does mean an apron repair is scheduled around the Village's processing window rather than around when a crew is free.

Worth knowing early, because it sometimes changes the order of a job. A drive that needs two panels replacing and the apron rebuilding is far simpler done under one application than discovered in halves.

What happens

Towns we pour in

Gurnee, and across north Lake County: Waukegan, Grayslake, Wadsworth, Beach Park, Zion and Park City. Whatever touches the street varies most from one to the next, since every village sets its own standard out there, and one or two of them are a good deal firmer about it than people expect.

If it turns into new work

Repair visits regularly end up being about the whole driveway or the whole garden. Our concrete driveway and concrete patio pages cover that, and we can price it on the same visit.