Franklin, Wisconsin

Concrete driveways, patios and slabs in Franklin

Franklin writes its own approach specification, and it asks for more concrete and an inspection before you pour. Both of those belong on a quote, and on a calendar, before anybody starts.

Request an estimate

Franklin sits directly west of us and we pour there regularly. It is also the municipality in this service area whose written requirements differ most from what a national cost guide assumes, which is why it is worth ten minutes before you take three quotes.

Seven inches, not four

The City sets a seven inch minimum for the drive approach. Residential flatwork on your own side of the property line is commonly built at four.

Three extra inches does not sound like much until you notice where it applies: across the widest, most heavily loaded strip of the whole job, the one every delivery and every visitor crosses. It is real volume, it is real money, and a quote that has priced your driveway at one thickness throughout has not priced a Franklin driveway.

This is the single most useful question to put to a bidder here. Not "how thick", but "how thick at the approach, and what does Franklin require".

The mix is specified too

The City's sheet opens with it: six bags of cement per cubic yard, air-entrained Portland cement concrete.

Air entrainment is what gives freezing water somewhere to go inside the concrete, which matters more at the road than anywhere else on a property, because that is the surface that meets road salt every winter of its life. A bidder should be able to confirm the mix they are ordering without checking.

Somebody has to look at it before you pour

This is the clause that changes schedules rather than prices. The formed approach has to be inspected, and the City asks that the call comes in 24 hours before the pour, on the Engineering Department's number. Inspections happen Monday through Friday, as the Inspector is available.

Read what that rules out. A crew cannot form on a Friday and pour on the Saturday. A pour cannot be pulled forward two days because the weather turned good. And the inspection request needs a permit number and the correct address attached, so the paperwork has to be finished and in hand before the forms go in, not alongside them.

None of this is difficult. All of it is a fortnight's delay if a contractor treats Franklin like a municipality that does not inspect.

The sheet is not the whole specification

The public requirements sheet covers the essentials. The complete specifications come from the City Engineer or the Building Inspector, as required by Ordinance No. 70-268.

Worth knowing for two reasons. You are entitled to ask for the current version rather than accept a contractor's summary of it, and a contractor who works Franklin regularly will already have it rather than promising to look into it.

Your own ground is a different story

Everything above governs the approach. Behind the property line, a Franklin patio or garage slab is much like anywhere else in the county, which is why patio projects here schedule far more easily than driveway projects do. If your work is entirely in the back garden, most of this page does not apply to you.

What we lay in Franklin

• Concrete driveways, with the approach priced at the City specification as its own line.
• Concrete patios, walks and sitting areas.
• Concrete repair, including approaches rebuilt to spec.
• Slabs for garages, sheds and pole barns, plus steps and porches.

The order a Franklin job runs in

Reading before you commit

• what a driveway costs here, and why the approach is its own line
• how the approach permit works on the Oak Creek side
• whether yours wants replacing or only repairing