Concrete Contractor in Minnetonka, MN

There is one thing about Minnetonka that a concrete contractor owes a homeowner up front, and it is not something you will usually see on a quote. City code requires bituminous concrete blacktop or equivalent paving for the driveway approach and for the section between the building setback line and the street. Portland cement concrete, which is what people mean when they say a concrete driveway, is restricted to the portion of the driveway outside the public right-of-way. On streets with asphalt curb, a concrete driveway has to stop two feet short of the road so the city can pave that final two feet itself.

That does not mean you cannot have a concrete driveway in Minnetonka. It means the piece nearest the street may not be concrete, and the transition has to be designed rather than discovered. We would rather explain that at the estimate than have you find it out when the permit comes back. It is the kind of thing worth knowing before the permit comes back.

A driveway permit is required for any new or realigned driveway, including the replacement of an existing driveway. It is handled by the Community Development Department, applications go through the city's ePermits system, and the fee is twenty-three dollars for residential driveways. The engineering contact the city lists is Senior Civil Engineer Jeremy Koenen at 952-939-8238.

Minnetonka is in Hennepin County, Zone II under Minnesota Rules 1303.1600, so footings go a minimum of forty-two inches below finished grade, absent an engineer's soil mechanics determination allowing a shallower depth. We pour stamped patios, pool decks, walkways, garage slabs, footings and foundation walls throughout the city, and we run our own line pump, which is what lets us reach the back of a property when a truck cannot get there.

Width, grade, corners and the right-of-way question

The width rules here are tied to the garage rather than to a single flat number. Maximum width at the right-of-way line is twenty feet for a standard two car garage driveway, and up to thirty feet for a driveway serving a three car garage. If a property has two driveways, their combined width is capped at thirty-five feet, and two driveways are only permitted if the property is at least one hundred ten feet wide. There is also a curb cut rule: a curb cut cannot exceed the driveway width at the property line by more than ten feet.

Then the corner setback. Driveway entrances and exits must be constructed a minimum of forty-five feet from any street corner, with the curb return excepted. On a corner lot in Minnetonka that number decides the layout before anything else does, and we measure it early.

Then there is grade, and it is the rule that decides the most on a lot where the garage sits well above or below the street. Maximum driveway slope is ten percent. That is a real constraint on a wooded hillside property with the garage well above or below the street, and it is the sort of thing that turns a driveway project into a grading project. It also has a direct bearing on how a concrete driveway performs in winter here, because a steep drive that ices is a different daily experience from a gentle one, and the city has put a ceiling on how steep it can be.

The city engineer also holds authority to require turnarounds on certain driveways and to mandate compliance upgrades when a property is modified or when adjacent city improvements happen. In practice that means a driveway that has been grandfathered for decades can be brought up to current standard as part of a larger project, which is worth knowing before you plan a remodel and a driveway as two unrelated budgets.

On the right-of-way permit we are going to be straight with you about an ambiguity rather than paper over it. The city's Right-of-Way Permits page says a right-of-way permit is required if a resident or utility company is obstructing or excavating in the road right-of-way or other public easements, and it gives retaining walls, monuments and berms as its examples. It does not explicitly confirm whether an ordinary driveway or apron replacement needs that permit in addition to the driveway permit, or whether the driveway permit already covers the right-of-way portion. The right-of-way permit is administered by the Engineering Division, the listed contact is Right-of-Way and Property Coordinator Sarah Krake at skrake@minnetonkamn.gov and 952-939-8246, City Code Section 1120 governs it, and the page notes a fee applies to cover permit review, processing and utility locating without stating an amount. We ask Engineering the question for your address rather than assume the answer, and we do that before anything gets formed.

The housing here explains why so much of our Minnetonka work is backyard work rather than driveway work. The city's own history page describes Minnetonka as still largely farmland as late as the 1960s, with the population doubling from twenty-five thousand in 1960 to about fifty thousand as large tracts were sold to developers, and city sewer and water lines replacing individual septic systems in the mid-1970s. That points at the bulk of residential build-out running from the 1960s through the 1970s, and it is the city's own account rather than a real estate estimate.

A house from that era on a wooded Minnetonka lot has usually had its driveway addressed at least once, but the backyard has often never had a proper hard surface at all. So the calls we get here skew toward stamped patios, sitting areas, pool decks and walkways on lots with slope, trees and no side yard route wide enough for a truck. That is usually a pumping job. Keeping the mixer at the street and running hose to the back is how a patio gets poured on a hillside lot without a machine tearing a path through a yard that took a long time to look like that.

Slope also changes how we build the patio itself, not just how we get concrete to it. On a falling lot the elevation has to be set against the door threshold first, then pitched so the slab moves water away from the foundation rather than collecting it against the house at the uphill edge. Where the ground falls away sharply we are often pouring steps and a landing as part of the same project, and those footings get dug down below frost, because a step that heaves is a step that will hurt somebody in February.

What we pour in Minnetonka

• Stamped patios, sitting areas and pool decks on wooded and sloping lots
• Pumped backyard pours where there is no side yard route for a mixer truck
• Concrete driveways poured to the portion outside the public right-of-way, with the approach handled to code
• Steps, landings and walkways carried on footings dug below frost
• Driveway layouts checked against the forty-five foot corner setback and the ten percent grade limit
• Footings and frost walls for additions, detached garages and outbuildings
• Garage slabs, floating slabs and thickened edge slabs
• Exposed aggregate, broom finish and decorative border work