Sidewalks & Walkways

A walkway that two people can use side by side needs to be at least four feet wide; three feet works for a secondary path but feels tight as a main approach. The most common mistake we are asked to correct is a front walk that was poured too narrow and now looks like an afterthought against the house it serves. Layout is worth deciding on site with the path staked out, because a walkway that reads well on a drawing can sit awkwardly once it is at grade against real doors, steps and planting beds.

Walkways have to work as a walking surface, which means paying attention to slope along the run as well as across it. Cross-slope for drainage is a quarter inch per foot. Running slope is a different question: anything over about five percent starts to feel like a ramp, and at that point steps are usually the better answer. Where a walk needs steps, riser heights have to be consistent — an inconsistent riser in a run of steps is the single most reliable way to trip somebody, because people stop looking at their feet after the first two.

Pedestrian walkways are poured at four inches, which is more than the load requires and about right for resisting cracking from ground movement. Where a walkway crosses a driveway or will occasionally be driven over — service access, a lawn tractor route — that section is thickened and reinforced rather than left at pedestrian spec. Fibre reinforcement through the mix is standard on our walkway pours.

Narrow slabs crack differently from wide ones. On a four-foot walk, control joints at roughly four to five foot spacing keep panels close to square, which is what you want — a long thin panel will crack across its middle to make itself two square ones. Joints are cut rather than tooled where the finish calls for it, and they are cut early, within hours of the pour finishing.

A broom finish across the direction of travel gives the best grip and is what we use by default on walkways. Where a walk runs under trees or on the north side of a house it will stay damp and grow algae, and a slightly heavier broom texture there is worth the small loss in smoothness. Edges are tooled to a radius so they do not chip.