Concrete Services Lincoln NE | Driveways, Patios

Service

Concrete Driveways, Replacements & Widenings

A driveway is the largest single piece of concrete most homeowners will ever buy, and in this climate it takes the hardest service: vehicle loads, a freeze-thaw cycle most winter nights, salt and brine tracked in on tires, and snowmelt running across it every thaw. Built correctly it lasts thirty years and more. Built on native loess at three and a half inches with no reinforcement, it is a patchwork of cracks before your mortgage is half paid.

New pours, full tear-out and replacement, and widening strips are all normal work for us. On a replacement we break out the old slab, haul it off, excavate to grade, and bring in and compact granular base — not because it sounds thorough but because loess loses strength when it is thoroughly wetted and the clay in the creek drainages around Lincoln swells through a wet spring and shrinks through a dry August. Either one will take your new driveway with it.

Widenings deserve a specific note, because they are where corners get cut most often. A new strip poured tight against a twenty-year-old driveway is two slabs that will move differently, since the old one finished settling long ago. Done right there is an isolation joint between them and drilled dowels holding the elevations together. Done wrong you get a lip and a water channel inside two winters.

Finished broom-swept concrete driveway curving up to an attached garage

Typical range: $8–$14 per square foot installed; $5,000–$10,000 for a standard two-car driveway including tear-out. Timeline: two to four days on site. Call (531) 236-8940 for a free measurement.

Service

Patios, Walkways & Outdoor Living Slabs

Large-format concrete patio with outdoor furniture and an umbrella in an enclosed back garden

Patios, patio extensions, service walks along the side of the house, paths to a shed or a garden, fire pit surrounds, seating areas and hot tub slabs. This is the work that makes a backyard usable, and in the newer additions across southeast Lincoln, Yankee Hill, Wilderness Hills, Fallbrook and Stevens Creek it is most of what we do.

Two things decide whether a patio is still good in fifteen years. The first is what is underneath, which on a newer lot usually means dealing honestly with the backfill zone beside the foundation rather than pouring across it and hoping — that ground was dug out for the basement and put back loose, and it settles for years. The second is slope. A patio has to shed water away from the house — roughly an eighth to a quarter inch per foot — or it will pond, freeze, and eventually send water somewhere expensive.

We broom-finish anything you walk on. A smooth trowel finish looks sharp in a photograph and is genuinely dangerous outdoors in a Nebraska January.

Typical range: $8–$14 per square foot for standard finishes; $1,900–$3,400 for a 12×16 patio. Timeline: one to three days.

Service

Driveway Approaches, Curb Cuts & Public Sidewalks

The strip between your driveway and the street, the curb cut it passes through, and the public sidewalk across your frontage are all in the public right-of-way. That makes them a different kind of job: permitted, inspected, and poured to the specification the city or county sets for thickness, slope and — on sidewalks — cross-slope for accessibility. It is also the part of a driveway that fails first, because it takes the turning loads of every vehicle entering the property plus the plow and the salt.

In most jurisdictions here the adjacent property owner is responsible for maintaining the public walk across their frontage, which surprises people. If you have received a notice about a sidewalk defect, bring it to the estimate and we will scope exactly what it asks for. Individual panel replacement is very often possible — there is usually no need to redo an entire run.

We pull the right-of-way permit, coordinate the inspection, and pour to spec. If a job needs traffic control or the curb itself has to be cut, that is priced in the written estimate rather than appearing later.

Typical range: $1,200–$3,000 for an approach; $9–$16 per square foot for public sidewalk panels. Timeline: one to two days plus permit lead time.

Service

Front Steps, Stoops & Porch Slabs

Steps are the job we get called about most often in the older neighborhoods — the Near South, Everett, University Place, Havelock, College View — and they are almost always failing for the same reason: the footing does not go deep enough. A step run poured on a shallow footing gets lifted by frost every winter and set back down slightly differently each spring. Do that fifty times and the rise between treads is all over the place, which is both annoying and a genuine fall risk. The required depth is set by the building department that will inspect the work, and in eastern Nebraska it is a real depth rather than a token one, so we confirm the current number rather than applying a rule of thumb.

Settled stoops on newer houses fail differently — they are sitting on the backfill beside the foundation and the fill kept consolidating. Those tip toward the house, which matters because a stoop tipped inward funnels roof and rain water straight at the foundation wall.

We rebuild step runs on footings poured below frost depth, with consistent rise and run, a slight forward pitch on every tread so water sheds, a textured finish, and clean provision for a railing where one is needed. Where the concrete is sound and only settlement is the problem, lifting is often the better-value fix and we will say so.

Exposed aggregate concrete steps and deck edge beside a pool

Typical range: $1,800–$5,000 for a rebuilt step and stoop run; $600–$2,500 to lift and stabilize a settled one. Timeline: two to four days including footing work.

Service

Garage, Shop & Outbuilding Floors

Concrete crew running a pump hose across a reinforced slab on chairs before placing

Interior slabs get judged on things exterior flatwork never faces. A garage floor has to handle vehicles dripping brine all winter, and a shop floor may need to carry a two-post lift, a loaded trailer, or a tractor. Both need a vapor barrier underneath, which is the detail most often skipped and the reason so many older garage floors around here sweat every spring and will not hold a coating. In the river-bottom ground around Crete, Milford, Ashland and Greenwood it matters even more, because there is more moisture available to move.

Our standard for a working shop floor is six inches over compacted granular base with #4 rebar on a grid, a 10–15 mil vapor barrier lapped and sealed, saw-cut joints laid out to keep panels roughly square, and a slope to a door or a drain so water leaves. If a lift is going in, the post locations need thickened footings poured as part of the slab — retrofitting that later means cutting your new floor apart. If the building will be heated with in-floor tubing, that gets tied down and pressure-tested before concrete touches it.

Tell us what is going on the floor and what the building is for. Sizing it correctly at the estimate costs a modest amount more; finding out later costs the whole floor.

Typical range: $8–$15 per square foot for a garage floor; $9–$16 for a shop or outbuilding floor. Timeline: two to five days depending on demolition and dirt work.

Service

RV, Boat, Shed & Equipment Pads

Camper and boat parking, shed and outbuilding slabs, hot tub pads, generator pads, and the small slab under a replacement air conditioner. Pads look like the simplest thing we pour and they have the highest rate of being done badly, because they are exactly the job a homeowner is tempted to hand to whoever offers the lowest number.

The things that matter: thickness matched to the load — five inches minimum for an RV, six for a big fifth wheel or anything with a tandem axle; drainage so you are not parking on a February ice sheet; a clean tie-in to the existing driveway with a proper isolation joint and dowels so the two slabs stay level; and reinforcement, because a pad carrying concentrated point loads from jacks and stabilizers is not a sidewalk. Hot tub pads need to be told the filled weight, which is usually several times what people assume.

Typical range: $3,000–$7,500 for an RV or boat pad; $500–$1,800 for a shed, AC or hot tub pad. Timeline: one to two days.

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Stamped, Colored & Exposed Aggregate Concrete

Stamped patterns, integral color, banded and bordered layouts, exposed aggregate, and broadcast finishes. Decorative concrete is genuinely good-looking and we are happy to pour it, but you deserve the honest version of the maintenance conversation before you commit, because that is where most disappointment comes from three years later.

The patio shown here is a random flagstone stamp with a colored release — the pattern people ask for most. Poured well it is a genuinely nice surface. Poured onto an unprepared base it is an expensive way to install a crack that runs straight through a pattern and cannot be disguised, which is the one thing plain gray has going for it by comparison.

Stamped concrete patio in a random flagstone pattern, curving into a lawn with a metal chair on it

In a freeze-thaw climate, decorative work is more exposed than plain gray, not less. Stamped surfaces have texture that holds water, and that water freezes. Colored surfaces show wear unevenly. Any decorative slab here needs a sealer, and sealers need reapplication every two to four years to keep doing their job. Skip that and the color chalks, the sheen goes patchy, and the surface starts taking freeze damage in the low spots.

What we recommend most often is restraint: a stamped or exposed border around a standard broom-finished field, or integral color with a light texture instead of a heavy stamp. It reads as a deliberate design, costs considerably less, and holds up far better through a Nebraska winter than a fully stamped driveway. One local note on sealers: a driveway that sees street salt is better served by a penetrating siloxane, which works inside the concrete, than by a film-forming sealer that will eventually chalk and go patchy at the surface.

Typical range: $14–$24 per square foot depending on pattern, color count and borderwork. Timeline: two to five days including sealing.

Service

Concrete Repair, Resurfacing, Lifting & Removal

Not everything needs replacing, and we would rather tell you that than sell you a tear-out. Repair work we do regularly:

Crack routing and sealing — the correct fix for a stable crack in an otherwise sound slab. It keeps water out, which is what actually causes the crack to widen.
Panel replacement — saw-cut clean at the joints, remove the failed panel, fix whatever caused it, and pour a matching replacement. Standard on sidewalks and driveways where the failure is localized.
Slab lifting and leveling — filling the void under a settled but structurally sound slab and raising it back to grade. Frequently a fraction of replacement cost, and around Lincoln it is the right call more often than people expect, because so much of the settlement here is a drainage problem rather than a concrete problem.
Resurfacing — a bonded polymer-modified overlay on a slab whose structure is fine but whose surface has scaled recently. Roughly a third to a half the cost of replacement, and you choose the texture.
Trip hazard removal — grinding or panel replacement, depending on what caused the lip and whether the cause is still active.
Removal and haul-off — taking concrete out and not replacing it, for a patio you want to turn back into yard.

The one thing we will not do is put a repair on a slab that is going to fail anyway. That matters a great deal in the older neighborhoods here, where a lot of flatwork predates air entrainment becoming standard practice and has been quietly losing its surface for eighty winters. A bonded overlay needs sound concrete to bond to, and a scaled surface is by definition not sound — the overlay comes off in sheets within a couple of seasons. When that is the situation we will say so plainly, even when the bigger job is not what you were hoping to hear.

Typical range: $300–$1,000 crack repair; $450–$1,400 per panel; $600–$2,500 slab lifting; $4–$8 per square foot resurfacing; $2–$5 per square foot removal. Timeline: most repairs are one day.

FAQ

Questions About These Services

Which of these jobs need a permit?

Anything in the public right-of-way: driveway approaches, curb cuts, and public sidewalk panels. Those are permitted and inspected, with required thickness, slope, and cross-slope on walks. In the city that goes through Lincoln; out on the county roads it goes through Lancaster County or the county you are in, because the approach sits in their right-of-way. Anything structural — footings for steps, a porch, a deck, or a detached building — is permitted as a structure. Flatwork entirely on your own property generally is not permitted. We identify which applies at your address during the estimate and pull what is needed.

Can I combine several of these into one job?

Yes, and it is usually the cheapest way to buy concrete. A large share of what any flatwork job costs is mobilization — getting the crew, the forms, the equipment and the truck to your house. Pouring the driveway, the service walk and the front steps on the same trip costs meaningfully less than three separate visits, and the finishes match because it is one pour on one day.

Do you use rebar or wire mesh?

It depends on the job, and the honest answer is that mesh gets used more than it should. For a standard residential driveway on a well-prepared base, #4 rebar on a two-foot grid, set on chairs, is what we normally specify. Wire mesh is acceptable on small pads but only if it is actually held up in the middle of the slab, and in practice it usually ends up walked into the dirt where it does nothing. Fiber in the mix helps with plastic shrinkage cracking but is not a substitute for either.

What thickness do I actually need?

Four inches is a passenger-car driveway or a patio. Five inches is what we recommend if you park a full-size truck, a work van, or anything with a trailer behind it. Six inches with rebar on a grid is a shop floor, an RV pad, or anywhere a tractor or a skid steer will run. Going from four to five inches on a typical driveway adds a modest amount to the total and roughly doubles the load the slab will carry before it cracks.

How soon after the pour can I use it?

Foot traffic in 24 to 48 hours. A passenger vehicle at about seven days. Heavy trucks, trailers, RVs, or a dumpster at 28 days. Those numbers stretch in cold weather, because concrete gains strength more slowly as temperature drops. We will give you the actual dates for your pour rather than the generic ones.

Do you do commercial work?

Light commercial, yes — dumpster pads, approach aprons, sidewalks, accessible ramps, equipment and generator pads, small loading areas, and repair for property managers and small businesses. Large structural and tilt-up work is a different trade with different equipment. Describe the job when you call and we will tell you straight whether it is in our lane.

Concrete Services in Lincoln & Southeast Nebraska

Concrete Driveways, Replacements & Widenings

Patios, Walkways & Outdoor Living Slabs

Driveway Approaches, Curb Cuts & Public Sidewalks

Front Steps, Stoops & Porch Slabs

Garage, Shop & Outbuilding Floors

RV, Boat, Shed & Equipment Pads

Stamped, Colored & Exposed Aggregate Concrete

Concrete Repair, Resurfacing, Lifting & Removal

Questions About These Services

Talk to Someone Who Pours Concrete

Concrete Services in Lincoln & Southeast Nebraska

Concrete Driveways, Replacements & Widenings

Patios, Walkways & Outdoor Living Slabs

Driveway Approaches, Curb Cuts & Public Sidewalks

Front Steps, Stoops & Porch Slabs

Garage, Shop & Outbuilding Floors

RV, Boat, Shed & Equipment Pads

Stamped, Colored & Exposed Aggregate Concrete

Concrete Repair, Resurfacing, Lifting & Removal

Questions About These Services

Where we pour

Talk to Someone Who Pours Concrete