Concrete Driveway Repair in St. Paul, Texas

A small town that chose to stay rural

St. Paul had its own post office in 1876, and in 1890 it counted thirty residents, a general store, a gristmill and a cotton gin, according to the Handbook of Texas. The Town says its name comes from the Catholic cemetery donated by the James Gallagher family in the late 1800s.

The Town of St. Paul was established in 1971, formed out of Wylie's extraterritorial jurisdiction to keep the spacious, rural setting residents were used to, with 202 people and 66 registered voters. It grew by annexation: 90 more families by September 15, 1972, another 109 properties petitioning on August 17, 1973, and Lakeshore Estates I and II in June 1984. Even the original Town Hall was a local effort, built with volunteer labor, with resident Glen Pockrus pouring the slab.

Repair options for cracks, settling and spalling

Cracks or holes under ¼ inch can be filled or patched as a temporary fix, though patches aren't watertight, while wider cracks, spalling and discoloration can be covered with resurfacing or an overlay. Not every crack is a structural problem: the NRMCA's view is that most random early cracks look bad but rarely affect concrete's structural integrity or service life.

Structural cracks

Because epoxy grips concrete harder than concrete's own tensile strength, injecting it can make a cracked slab structurally sound again, in cracks as fine as 0.002 inch, according to ACI 224.1R. Epoxy may not be the best fix, though, where the concrete is expected to keep moving.

Settled panels

When a slab sinks, the first suspect is fill dirt that wasn't compacted well, with erosion below the slab and shrinking soil as other possibilities. Traditional mudjacking lets you use the slab immediately and often costs less than half as much as replacing it, while foam maker Alchatek points out that foam, unlike mud, resists water, which helps prevent future erosion and settling.

Spalled surfaces

Freeze-thaw cycles, de-icing salts, poor finishing, improper curing and a bad concrete mix are among the causes of spalling, and there are three fixes: a color-matched patch, an overlay, or tearing out and replacing the slab.

Freezes, heat and when to schedule

Winter matters for any section that has to be poured. NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for the nearby Richardson station count 34.7 days a year at 32°F or colder, with a median first freeze on November 21 and a median last freeze on March 7. Below about 25°F fresh concrete freezes, and the NRMCA warns that a freeze at that stage can take more than 50% off its potential strength; its rule is to keep new concrete protected until it hits 500 psi, which takes about two days.

Summer is the opposite problem. July and August have normal daily highs of 95.6°F and 95.8°F at DFW Airport (1991-2020), and the NRMCA's hot-weather advice is to avoid the hottest part of the day. We'll talk through timing along with the repair itself.

Other concrete work in and around town

Besides repairs, we pour replacement driveways, approaches and walks, level settled slabs, and resurface or seal worn concrete. For retaining walls, the Town's 2019 fee schedule says walls up to 4 feet tall, measured from the bottom of the footing, don't normally need a permit unless they support a surcharge or impound certain classes of liquids; the residential retaining wall base fee is $100 for up to 50 feet of wall and $150 beyond that.

Close by, Garland Elite Concrete also takes on concrete resurfacing and sealing in Seis Lagos and concrete driveway repair in Wylie.