Concrete Contractors in Manhattan, KS

Concrete Contractors Manhattan pours residential concrete in Manhattan, Kansas, the Flint Hills college town on the Kansas and Big Blue rivers, and in Junction City, Wamego and the smaller towns between them. New driveways, patios, stamped concrete, sidewalks, steps and garage or shed slabs are most of the list, along with fixing or replacing slabs that have split, sunk or started to scale.

Kansas weather pushes concrete from both sides. Under the 1991 to 2020 normals, Manhattan's January lows average 18.7 degrees and its July highs average 90.8. The city gets 35.77 inches of precipitation in an average year, most of it in May through August storms, plus about 17.6 inches of snow. What actually ruins a driveway or walk here is water: it soaks into or under the slab, freezes, expands and breaks it apart. So the job is about two things, steering water away and using concrete that can survive a hard freeze.

The ground under Manhattan

The Flint Hills formed from limestone and shale. As that rock weathers it leaves a clay soil packed with chert gravel, and many hilltops are capped with the chert. Downtown was built on a broad, flat floodplain at the river junction, while newer neighborhoods sit up in the hills. That means one yard can hit rock just under the sod while another has deep clay that grows and shrinks with the seasons. We dig test spots, see what is actually there and design the base for that lot instead of using one standard section for every job.

Old houses, new houses and plenty of rentals

Manhattan's homes span every decade. Census survey estimates give a median build year of 1983, yet roughly a third of the housing went up between 1950 and 1979 and around 7 percent dates to 1939 or before. Flatwork from those years tends to be thin, laid on little or no base and by now cracked or tilted by roots. On the other end, close to 30 percent of homes were built from 2000 through 2019, and those slabs are old enough to start settling by the garage and to need a first seal or a reseal. With more than half of occupied homes rented out, we also price walks, steps and parking pads for landlords who want durable work done between leases.

Built into every outdoor slab

• Compacted rock base: soft or organic soil comes out and crushed rock goes in, packed in layers.
• Air-entrained mix: microscopic air pockets leave room for freezing water, which is the main protection against surface flaking.
• Steel sized to the job: rebar or welded wire, picked for the load and the soil.
• Planned joints: tooled or saw-cut lines that give shrinkage cracks a straight, out-of-the-way place to form.
• Pitch: the surface falls away from the house toward the yard or street.
• A real cure: the slab stays damp or gets a curing compound so it reaches full strength.

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What concrete costs

According to HomeGuide's national cost guides, a plain gray driveway runs roughly $6 to $10 a square foot installed, and a two-car driveway lands somewhere between $2,400 and $8,600. HomeGuide puts plain patios at $4 to $12 a square foot. Stamping and color raise those numbers. Each service page has its own cost table naming its source, and our written quotes break the price into line items.

Sidewalk repair notices (2016 report)

A June 2016 Manhattan Mercury article explained that Kansas law, K.S.A. 12-1808, makes owners responsible for the public sidewalk next to their property, and that at the time the City of Manhattan's code services department sent repair notices for settled, broken or offset squares and inspected the finished work. That report is from 2016, so confirm today's process with the city. If you receive a notice, send us the deadline and we will plan the job around it.

Call (785) 509-7585 to set up a free estimate in Manhattan, KS or a nearby town.

Call (785) 509-7585

We work all over Manhattan, Kansas, from the older blocks around downtown and Kansas State University to the hillside neighborhoods, on both the Riley County and Pottawatomie County sides of town. Beyond the city we cover Junction City, Grandview Plaza, Ogden, Milford and homes off post around Fort Riley to the west; Wamego, St. George, Belvue, Louisville, St. Marys and Westmoreland to the east; Riley, Leonardville, Keats, Randolph and Olsburg to the north and northwest; Wakefield and Chapman farther west; and Alma to the south. Not sure if your town is covered? Call (785) 509-7585.