Abilene, Texas · Taylor County
Sidewalk work in Abilene falls into two piles. There's the walk on your own property, from the driveway to the front door or around the side of the house, which is yours to design. Then there's the public sidewalk along the street, which the City expects you to keep up and which has to be built to City standards. Abilene Concrete Builders pours both.
A front walk should be wide enough for two people side by side and slope just enough to shed water. We form straight or curved walks, add a landing at the porch, and tie the walk into the driveway with an isolation joint so each slab can move on its own.
Steps are where uneven risers trip people. We form every riser to the same height, add a broom texture for grip, and put a landing at the door wide enough to open a storm door without stepping back off the edge.
Paths to the trash cans, the gate or the shop take a beating from wheels and mowers. We pour them at full thickness with steel, not as a thin skim that breaks the first time a loaded wheelbarrow rolls over the edge.
The City's Engineering FAQ answers this plainly: the City won't fix a cracked sidewalk, because the adjacent property owner is responsible for repairing and maintaining the sidewalk and curb. A second City FAQ adds that if a sidewalk is in bad condition, you can't just remove it. You have to repair or replace it.
Public sidewalk work needs a right-of-way permit, and whoever does it has to post the City's $1,000 Street Contractor's Bond. The forms are inspected before the pour, and bagged sackcrete doesn't meet the City's standard. We cover the permit and bond in more detail on our driveway approach page.
The City's Design Standards sheet for sidewalks, DS-7, sets out what a public walk needs:
Abilene's Land Development Code sets a walkway rule for its Multiple-Family (MF) district: a paved walkway at least 4 feet wide has to connect the front door of each ground-floor unit to a parking area, and a sidewalk next to head-in parking has to be at least 6 feet wide to leave room for a 2-foot bumper overhang. We pour and replace those walks for property managers as well as homeowners. Larger parking and site work is on our commercial concrete page.
HomeGuide puts concrete sidewalks at $7 to $17 per square foot installed, nationally. Tear-out of a broken public walk, the permit and the bond show up as separate lines on our estimate.
Tell us how many feet of walk you need, whether it's on your property or along the street, and send a photo if it's damaged. Call (325) 728-4111 anytime, or use the quote form and choose "Sidewalk / Walkway."
Prefer to talk? Call (325) 728-4111 anytime.
See every service we offer at Abilene Concrete Builders.
