Getting there
No drive to speak of. Our shop is on 25th Street SW, a few minutes from Broadway Avenue, so a site visit in Cokato is usually the same day you call or the next morning.
Cokato housing: an older core, newer edges, and lake lots to the northeast
Most of the houses in the middle of Cokato were built in the early to mid 1900s on quarter to half acre lots along the grid off Broadway Avenue. Those homes have had several generations of concrete poured around them, and a lot of it is at the end of its life. We see original sidewalks that have tipped toward the house, garage aprons that dropped where the downspout hits, and front steps that pulled away from the foundation. Newer homes ring the edges of town and sit on bigger lots, and out toward Cokato Lake the housing is a mix of older cabins that became year-round homes and newer builds on sloped shoreline. Each of those three kinds of property asks for something different from us, and we bid them differently.
Clay soil, a 42-inch frost line, and what that does to a slab
Cokato sits on glacial till. Dig anywhere in town and you hit clay a foot or two down, and that clay holds water. When it freezes it swells, and a slab poured right on top of it gets lifted unevenly every winter until it cracks. Wright County builds footings to the 42-inch frost depth for a reason. Flatwork does not go that deep, so the defense is a compacted gravel base that drains, a slab pitched away from the house, and joints cut where the concrete wants to crack anyway. On a driveway we typically strip the topsoil and any old base, bring in class 5 gravel, compact it in lifts, and pour at least four inches with a broom finish. On garage and shop slabs we go thicker where the vehicles park and add mesh or fiber. The concrete season here runs from roughly mid April to October, and we do not pour into frozen ground to hit a date.
Cokato Lake and Brooks Lake
Cokato Lake is about 550 acres and sits northeast of town between County Roads 3 and 4. Brooks Lake is a smaller lake, under 100 acres, to the southwest. The lake lots around Cokato Lake are the sloped ones, and slope is where most of our hardscape work in town comes from: boulder retaining walls to hold a bank, steps down to the water, a concrete pad or slab for a lake shed, and riprap where the bank is washing out. Water moves downhill fast on those lots during a spring melt, so we grade the patios and paths to carry it around the house instead of through the walkout.
Concrete flatwork in Cokato
Concrete flatwork is the bulk of our Cokato work, and the older lots along Broadway are where a cracked and heaved driveway most often becomes a full tear-out and repour with a proper gravel base underneath. How we pour driveways, patios, and pool decks that hold up here.
Lake and shoreline work near Cokato
Shoreline work around Cokato means boulder walls, riprap, and lake-access steps on the sloped lots at Cokato Lake and Brooks Lake. Our largest shoreline project to date was a boulder retaining wall with fieldstone riprap on Lake Sylvia, southwest of Annandale, about 20 minutes north of here. The same approach, sized to the bank, is what we bring to a Cokato lot. Riprap, boulder walls, and what the permits look like.
Around Cokato
- Cokato Lake
- Brooks Lake
- Broadway Avenue
- US-12
What we build in Cokato
Questions from Cokato
My Cokato driveway was poured decades ago and has heaved along the garage. Can it be patched or does it need to come out?
Most heaved driveways on the older Cokato lots need to come out. The lift comes from clay under the slab, not from the concrete itself, so patching the surface leaves the cause in place. We remove the old slab, dig out the clay a few inches, compact class 5 gravel, and repour with control joints so it moves as one piece. A patch only makes sense for a single spalled corner on an otherwise sound slab.
Do you handle the lake lots on Cokato Lake, or only work in town?
We work the Cokato Lake lots regularly, and they are some of our favorite jobs. Boulder retaining walls, steps down the bank, riprap on a washing shoreline, and slabs for lake sheds are all normal work for us. Shoreline work below the ordinary high water line needs a permit, and we will tell you upfront if your project crosses that line.
When is the earliest in the year you can pour a patio in Cokato?
Usually mid April, once the frost is out of the ground and the clay has drained enough to compact a base. Some years it is later. Pouring on frozen or saturated ground is how a patio ends up with a crack across it by the second winter, so we schedule spring work by ground conditions and not by the calendar.
Nearby
We also work in Dassel, Howard Lake, Annandale and Hutchinson. All the towns we cover.