Getting there
About six miles and ten minutes west of our shop on US-12. Dassel is the closest town to us after Cokato itself, and the truck can be there and back without affecting the day's schedule.
Dassel homes: a small-town grid off Parker Avenue and the lake places around it
Dassel is a town of about fifteen hundred people. US-12 runs through it as Parker Avenue, and Highway 15 crosses it heading north and south. The houses in town are mostly older, on modest lots along the streets that run off Parker, with detached garages and the kind of narrow concrete driveway that was poured for a car half the size of the one parked on it now. Widening those driveways, replacing tipped sidewalks, and putting a proper slab under a new garage make up a lot of what we do in town. Outside the city limits the picture changes: farmsteads with pole sheds that need a floor, and lake places on Spring Lake and Lake Washington where the ground slopes and the shoreline needs holding.
Meeker County clay, water, and frost
Dassel sits on the same glacial till as Cokato. The soil is clay heavy, it holds water, and it heaves when it freezes. Footings in this part of the state go to the 42-inch frost line, but a driveway or patio cannot, so the base is what protects it. We dig out the clay, compact gravel in lifts, and pitch the slab so meltwater runs away from the house and off the edge rather than pooling and soaking in. On a sloped lake lot we pay close attention to where the water goes when the snow comes off, because a shoreline wall with water building up behind it will lean within a few winters. Drainage stone and a way out for the water are part of every wall we build here.
Spring Lake, Sellards Lake, and Lake Washington
Spring Lake sits against the northeast side of town, about 200 acres, with the city park and boat landing about a mile north of downtown just east of County Road 4. Sellards Lake sits on the southwest side. The big water is Lake Washington, more than 2,600 acres, about two miles west of Dassel on US-12 and a mile south of the highway. It sits between Dassel and Darwin, and its shoreline lots are the picture of lake work around Dassel: a sloped lot, a bank that needs holding, and a shoreline that has to stand up to ice push in spring.
Concrete flatwork in Dassel
Concrete flatwork in Dassel leans toward driveways and garage slabs on the in-town lots off Parker Avenue, where the original narrow drives are being widened for two-vehicle households and the old garage floors have cracked into pieces. How we pour driveways, patios, and pool decks that hold up here.
Lake and shoreline work near Dassel
The clearest example of our shoreline work is the boulder retaining wall with fieldstone riprap we built on Lake Sylvia near Annandale. Lake Washington, Spring Lake, and Sellards Lake properties around Dassel get the same treatment sized to the bank: boulders set on a gravel bed, riprap where the wave action hits, and steps where you need to reach the dock. Riprap, boulder walls, and what the permits look like.
Around Dassel
- Lake Washington
- Spring Lake
- Sellards Lake
- Parker Avenue
- Highway 15
What we build in Dassel
Questions from Dassel
Have you done boulder shoreline work near Dassel, and can I see it?
Our largest shoreline job so far is a boulder retaining wall with fieldstone riprap on Lake Sylvia near Annandale, and the photos are on this site. We do not give out the owner's address, but they show the bank before and after, the size of the boulders, and how the riprap meets the water. The same build, sized to your bank, is what we bring to Lake Washington and Spring Lake lots.
My Dassel driveway is one car wide. Can you widen it without replacing the whole thing?
Often, yes. If the existing slab is sound and sits on a decent base, we can add a strip alongside it, dowel the new pour into the old one, and match the broom finish. If the old slab is heaved or cracked into pieces, adding onto it just gives the new section something to move against, and we would recommend replacing the whole drive on a fresh gravel base.
Do you pour floors for pole sheds on farms outside Dassel?
We do. Shop and pole shed floors outside Dassel are a regular part of our year. The floor goes in after the building is up, on compacted gravel with a vapor barrier, thicker where equipment will park, with control joints cut in a grid. Getting a ready-mix truck to the site and around the building is usually the first thing we check on the site visit.
Nearby
We also work in Cokato, Litchfield and Hutchinson. All the towns we cover.