What does a concrete walk along the side of the house need?

What does a walk along the side of the house need that a front walk does not?

A side walk needs a plan for everything already living in that strip. It has to fall away from the foundation across its whole width, cross each downspout on purpose, go around the air conditioner and the meters, and leave the gate room to swing. The north side needs a finish that grips in the shade. How wide it should be is answered on the page for concrete walks and steps in Henderson.

Walk the strip before anyone draws a line on it. On most houses the list looks something like this:

• one or two downspouts letting out at the wall
• the condenser on its pad, usually halfway back
• the gas meter and the electric meter, sometimes on opposite sides
• a hose bib at knee height
• the gate, and which way it swings
• the corner where nothing grows because the sun never gets there

On the East End ranches off Green Street and Zion Road, that strip runs from the edge of the driveway back to the yard gate, and it is often the walk people use more than the front one. The brick houses on Main, Center and Elm near downtown sit close together, so the side yard there can be a few feet of ground between two walls.

Should the walk touch the house?

It can sit right against the foundation, with an isolation joint between them so the walk and the house move on their own. It should never be pinned to the wall. A narrow walk has little room for fall, and all of it has to run away from the house, so the edge at the wall is the high edge and the yard side is the low one.

That fall matters more beside a house than out front. The ground along a foundation was dug out and backfilled when the house went up, and it is the wettest clay on most lots. A walk that tips even slightly toward the wall turns into a gutter that empties against the basement or the crawlspace.

The joint itself is a strip of compressible material set against the foundation before the pour, so the concrete never bonds to the house.

What happens where a downspout lets out onto the walk?

A downspout that empties onto the walk at the wall puts a whole roof’s worth of water on the concrete and into the clay at its edge. In winter that water freezes on the surface and works under the panel, and the panel nearest the downspout is usually the first to tip or crack. Each downspout gets one of three answers, decided at the site visit.

The first is a pipe laid under the walk before the pour, so the downspout connects to it and the water comes out past the far edge. Once the concrete is down, that pipe cannot be added without cutting the walk, which is why it gets settled before forming.

The second is turning the downspout to empty beyond the walk, which works where there is lawn on the far side to take the water and a slope to carry it off.

The third is stopping the walk short of the downspout with a gap of gravel or ground, so the water lands on something that can take it. On a short run between the driveway and a gate, that plain answer is sometimes the right one.

You can usually tell where the trouble is before anyone measures. The splash block that has sunk into the ground, the bare patch below it, the stain on the brick a foot up the wall.

Why is the walk on the north side still icy at noon?

The north side of a house gets little or no winter sun, so frost and ice hang on there after the driveway and the front walk have cleared. A walk in that shade needs a broom texture running across it, side to side, for footing, and a slight cross-slope so melt drains off the edge instead of running down the length of the walk and freezing in a sheet at the low end.

The mix is air-entrained, for the reasons laid out in why Henderson County concrete gets poured a little differently.

What about the air conditioner, the meters and the hose bib?

The walk goes around the condenser pad, or the condenser gets a new pad of its own as part of the job. Concrete never gets poured up against a running unit. The ground right at the gas and electric meters stays the way the utility set it, and the crew asks before forming anywhere near them. Utility locates get called before any digging starts.

The hose bib is the one people forget. A spigot over the walk drips after every use, and in winter that drip freezes on the concrete right below it. Pitching the walk away from the bib keeps the wet spot off the path. A green or dark strip on the old ground under the spigot shows how far the water reaches.

How does the concrete get there when the truck cannot reach the side yard?

On many side walks the mixer can back up to the driveway end and pour the first stretch from the chute, and the rest gets carried. Downtown, where the houses on Main, Center and Elm sit close, the truck may not get within reach of any of it. Then the concrete moves in power buggies, a wheelbarrow line or a pump, and the quote carries it as a separate line.

The same question comes up on every back-yard pour, and the page on getting concrete into a fenced back yard goes through how it gets answered. For a side walk the narrowness itself is the issue. The forms and the people finishing have to fit in the same few feet the concrete is going into.

Can the walk replace stepping stones or a gravel path that is already there?

Yes. The stepping stones, the edging and any landscape fabric come out first, and the line the old path took is often the right line for the new walk, since it is the route people already walk. Whether the old gravel can stay as part of the base depends on how deep it is and what is under it, and that gets checked by digging at the site visit, not promised over the phone.

A path of stones set in the lawn was usually laid on bare ground. Under a few seasons of mowing and rain, some of the stones sink and some ride up. The concrete walk is a different build from the ground up, and the page on how a walk is jointed and how thick it is poured covers how thick it goes and where it gets cut. Walk work here is priced by the running foot, $40 - $55 per linear ft at four feet wide, which makes the length from the driveway to the gate the measurement to have.

Where does the side walk end in the back yard?

Usually at a patio, a back stoop or the edge of the lawn. Where it meets a patio or a stoop, an isolation joint goes between them so each can move on its own. The last panel pitches away from the back door, not toward it, and the walk’s edge stays clear of the gate’s swing so the gate does not drag or catch on the concrete.

If the walk ends at an old back stoop that may not outlast the new concrete, that is its own question, answered in whether old concrete steps need a patch or a new flight. If the yard drops off behind the house, the end of the walk has to meet a grade that changes, and a patio on a back yard that slopes goes through reading that drop.