Getting there
About six miles and ten minutes east of our shop on US-12. Howard Lake is close enough that we can send the truck over for a small job without planning the whole day around it.
Howard Lake's housing: a rail-town grid, the fairgrounds, and shoreline homes
Howard Lake is a town of about two thousand people that grew up along the railroad and US-12, and it hosts the Wright County Fair every summer. The core of town is a grid of older homes with detached garages and concrete that has been through a lot of winters. Front walks that have settled toward the street, back steps that have separated from the house, and driveways with a heave across them where a tree root or a wet spot in the clay got under the slab are the usual calls. The town sits on the south shore of the lake, so a few blocks north of downtown the lots start to slope toward the water and the work changes from flatwork to walls, steps, and shoreline.
Why driveways heave in Howard Lake, and what we do about it
The soil here is glacial till, clay that holds water and swells when it freezes. A driveway poured on that clay with no real base gets lifted a little every winter and dropped every spring, and after enough cycles it cracks. Wright County sets its footing depth at 42 inches for the same reason. For flatwork we cannot go that deep, so we build a base that drains: strip the topsoil and old material, compact several inches of class 5 gravel, and pour a four-inch or thicker slab with joints spaced so the cracking happens where we planned it. We pitch the slab so meltwater leaves the surface rather than sitting on it and soaking into the base. That is the whole difference between a driveway that lasts and one that does not, and it is invisible once the concrete is down.
The lake, and where the water goes
Howard Lake is about 745 acres and reaches 39 feet at its deepest point, with an average depth of around 16 feet. Lions Park, on the southeast end of the lake, is the most used public access. Water flows out of the south end of Howard Lake into Mallard Pass Lake and on into Dutch Lake, so the lots on that side of town sit in the path of that flow and tend to be the wet ones. On the shoreline lots we build boulder retaining walls where the bank is steep, riprap where wave action is eating it, and steps down to the dock. On the flatter wet lots the work is drainage: grading, a swale, or a rock bed that carries water around the slab instead of under it.
Concrete flatwork in Howard Lake
Concrete flatwork in Howard Lake is mostly driveway and patio replacement on the older grid south of the lake, where the original slabs went in without a gravel base and the clay has finally had its way with them. How we pour driveways, patios, and pool decks that hold up here.
Lake and shoreline work near Howard Lake
The shoreline lots on Howard Lake get boulder walls, riprap, and lake-access steps from us. The lake is shallow along much of its edge and ice push in spring is hard on an unprotected bank, so we set the first course of boulders on a gravel bed below the expected scour line and build up from there. Riprap, boulder walls, and what the permits look like.
Around Howard Lake
- Howard Lake
- Lions Park
- Mallard Pass Lake
- Dutch Lake
- Wright County Fairgrounds
- US-12
What we build in Howard Lake
Questions from Howard Lake
Our lot is on the south side of Howard Lake and the yard stays wet into June. Can you still pour a patio?
Yes, but the water has to be dealt with first. Lots on the south side sit where the lake drains toward Mallard Pass, and the clay there holds water a long time. We would grade the yard or cut a swale to move the water around the patio, dig deeper for a thicker gravel base, and pitch the slab away from the house. A patio poured on saturated clay without that work will heave.
The bank on our Howard Lake lot is sliding into the water a little more each spring. Is a boulder wall the right fix?
Usually, yes. Ice push and wave action work on an unprotected bank every year, and a boulder wall or riprap stops it. We set the base course on gravel below the scour line, stack boulders back into the slope, and add drainage so water behind the wall has a way out. Work at or below the water line needs a permit, and we will walk you through that before we start.
Can you match the broom finish on an old Howard Lake driveway if we only replace the section by the garage?
We can get close on the texture but not on the color. New concrete is lighter and stays that way for a year or more, and the old slab has decades of weathering on it. If the rest of the driveway is sound, replacing one section is a fair choice and the color difference fades. If the old slab is cracked in more than one place, replacing all of it is usually the better spend.
Nearby
We also work in Cokato, Winsted, Montrose and Maple Lake. All the towns we cover.