Town of Lyons, Walworth County

Concrete driveways and patios for Town of Lyons homes

Driveways from the road to the garage, patios off the back door, and floors for the barns and workshops out on the lots. Poured by a local crew working out of Burlington, one town over, with the Town's own driveway chapter read before a price is written.

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Concrete work on Lyons lots

A town rather than a village means country lots, and on a country lot the driveway tends to be the biggest pour on the place. Plenty of Lyons jobs start there: a concrete driveway replacing tired asphalt or a gravel run that washes out every spring. Next come concrete patios and the walks that join them to the house. Where a slab has failed in one place and not everywhere, concrete repair cuts out and replaces the broken section rather than the whole drive.

Outbuildings are the other kind of job out here. We pour the floor and the footings for a pole barn, a detached garage or a workshop; somebody else puts the building up on top. Saying that plainly now saves a confused phone call later.

Trading gravel or blacktop for concrete

The switch is mostly a base job with a pour at the end. Gravel drives that have been topped up for years hide soft spots, and those have to come out or be firmed up before a slab goes over them, otherwise the new concrete simply records where they were. A residential slab is four inches at minimum, and control joints are cut at a spacing tied to that thickness so the cracking that every slab does happens in straight lines where you chose, not across the middle of a panel.

On a long drive the other question is water. Where does it go now, and where will it go once the surface stops soaking it up? That answer shapes the pitch of the slab and whether the road end needs a pipe under it, which is the point where the Town gets involved.

Two Town rules to know before the road end is dug

Lyons writes its own driveway chapter. Under Chapter 17, section 17.10, no driveway is built without an application to the Town Building Inspector, who approves its location and construction and can make grading, soil stabilization or a culvert a condition of the permit. Section 17.20 adds that a drive built alongside a house under a building permit needs no separate driveway permit, although the Inspector still has to approve it. The Building Inspector's own permit checklist sends driveway permits through the Town Highway Department instead, so ask the Town Hall which desk takes yours.

Culverts sit in the streets chapter. Section 4.44 has the Town Board approve their size, length and grade, never below 15 inches in diameter, and a driveway culvert no shorter than 22 feet. The Town fee schedule also lists patios under land disturbance and erosion control.

Questions from Lyons

Do you come out to the Town of Lyons, or only work inside Burlington?

We come out. Lyons sits right next door, across the county line in Walworth County, and the estimate visit is free wherever the job is. The only thing the county line changes is whose rules apply at the road.

Is a new patio something the Town wants to hear about?

Possibly. The Town fee schedule lists patios under land disturbance and erosion control, next to decks, retaining walls and pools. Put the question to the Building Inspector before the ground is opened, not after the concrete is down.

Who decides how big the culvert under my drive has to be?

The Town. Its streets chapter has the Town Board approve culvert size, length and grade, and sets a floor: fifteen inches across and, for a driveway, at least twenty-two feet long. The Building Inspector can also make a culvert a condition of the driveway permit.

My slab has only sunk. Can you raise it?

No. Lifting and mudjacking are not work we do. If a sunken slab is otherwise sound we will say it is a lifting job and leave it there. When it has cracked through or broken up, replacement is where we come in.

Before you ring anyone, two pages are worth ten minutes: what moves the number on a driveway around here, and how concrete and asphalt compare once the winters are counted.