Getting there
About 14 miles northeast of our shop, roughly 25 minutes. We take County Road 3 north out of Cokato to Highway 55 and head east. Maple Lake jobs are planned as full days, and we group them with Annandale and Buffalo work when we can.
Maple Lake homes: a Highway 55 town with the lake on its doorstep
Maple Lake is a small town on Highway 55 with the lake right against it, and that shapes the work. In town the housing is older, on the kind of lots where the driveway, the walk, and the garage apron were poured at different times and have settled at different rates. We do a lot of tear-out and repour here: a driveway that has cracked into three pieces, a front walk that tips toward the foundation, steps that have pulled away from the house. On the lake the housing is a mix of older cabins that have become year-round homes and newer builds on the same sloped ground. Those lots ask for retaining walls, steps to the water, a slab for the lake shed, and a patio with a fire pit facing the lake, which is the most requested outdoor project we build in this town.
A deep lake, a steep bank, and where the water wants to go
Maple Lake is unusually deep for a lake this size, and the banks around it are correspondingly steep in places. Steep banks on clay soil are the hardest ground we work on. Water coming off the lot in spring runs fast, ice push in April moves anything loose at the water line, and a bank without protection loses ground every year. A boulder retaining wall with a drained gravel backfill holds the slope. Riprap at the toe takes the wave and ice energy. Steps set into the wall get you down to the dock. We build all three as a system, because a wall with nowhere for the water to go behind it will lean within a few winters, and steps that channel runoff onto the wall face will undercut it.
Frost, clay, and the base under every slab
Maple Lake is on glacial till like the rest of the county. The clay holds water, freezes, and heaves, which is why Wright County builds footings to a 42-inch frost depth. Flatwork cannot go that deep, so what protects a driveway or patio is the base and the pitch. We strip the clay a few inches, compact class 5 gravel in lifts, pour at least four inches, and cut control joints where the slab wants to crack. Everything is pitched away from the house. On a sloped lake lot we also grade so meltwater runs around the patio and into a rock bed or swale rather than under the slab. The concrete season here runs roughly mid April to October, and the lake lots are usually the last to thaw because of the shade.
Concrete flatwork in Maple Lake
Concrete flatwork in Maple Lake means fire pit patios facing the water on the lake lots and driveway replacements on the older in-town lots off Highway 55, with a real gravel base under both. How we pour driveways, patios, and pool decks that hold up here.
Lake and shoreline work near Maple Lake
Maple Lake's steep, wooded banks are the reason we bring boulder walls, riprap, and stone steps up here. The lake is deep close to shore in places, so we set the base course of a wall carefully and build drainage into everything behind it. Work at or below the ordinary high water line needs a permit, and we will flag which parts of your project cross it. Riprap, boulder walls, and what the permits look like.
Around Maple Lake
- Maple Lake
- Highway 55
What we build in Maple Lake
Questions from Maple Lake
We want a fire pit patio facing Maple Lake, but the yard slopes hard toward the water. What does that take?
A retaining wall on the downhill side first, then the patio behind it. The wall makes the flat ground. We build it with drained gravel backfill so water does not build up behind it, set the patio on compacted gravel above that, and put the fire pit on the patio with a stone or boulder ring. Sizing the wall to the slope is the main variable, and we measure it on the site visit.
Our Maple Lake bank loses a little more every spring when the ice goes out. Is that normal, and can you stop it?
It is normal on this lake. Ice push in April and wave action all summer work on any bank that is not protected. Riprap at the water line stops most of it, and a boulder wall above the riprap holds a bank that is too steep for loose stone. We set the first course below the scour line on a gravel bed so it does not undermine. Shoreline work at the water needs a permit, which we walk you through.
Our lake lot in Maple Lake is heavily shaded. Does that change when you can pour?
It does. Shaded lake lots hold frost longer than open ground in town, sometimes by a couple of weeks. We do not pour on frozen or saturated clay, so a shaded shoreline patio is usually a May job rather than an April one. On the other side, shade is good for a summer pour because the slab cures slower and more evenly.
Nearby
We also work in Annandale, Buffalo and Howard Lake. All the towns we cover.