Concrete Patios in Red Wing
Built for the view.

A patio in Red Wing is not a flat rectangle in a flat backyard, and that is the whole appeal. The town rises off the Mississippi into the bluffs, so a lot of the yards we pour in look out over the river valley, over Barn Bluff, over the rooftops of the historic downtown. That view is worth building for, and a well-laid concrete patio, sometimes terraced down the slope in levels, turns a steep or awkward yard into the best room in the house for the short Minnesota summer. Back patios, front walks, pool decks, the pad under a hot tub or an outdoor kitchen: we pour all of it, and up here we pour a fair amount of it on a grade.

Building on a slope means the layout does more work than it does on the prairie. A multi-level patio has to be formed in terraces, each pad set to its own grade with the fall running the right way, and the edges held with thickened forms so meltwater and runoff cannot wash the base out from under them. We walk the yard first, figure out where the levels want to sit and where the steps go, and then pour each pad to the same base and steel spec regardless of how the ground drops away. The view sells the patio; the grading and the base are what keep it standing.

Drainage is the make-or-break on any Red Wing patio, and it is doubly true down on the valley floor. The lots near the water sit on sand, old fill, and a water table that rides close to the surface, and every spring the melt comes down off the bluffs and out of the older neighborhoods and passes right through that ground. A patio poured flat down there collects water against the house, and in a river-town winter that water becomes ice, and ice lifts concrete. So we pitch a quarter-inch of fall per foot away from the foundation on every patio, and on the wettest lots we add a drain at the high side so the slab works with the water instead of drowning under it.

Under the finish is the same engineering as any pour we do, because a patio cracks when the ground beneath it moves, not because the concrete is weak. We strip the topsoil, compact four inches of Class 5 in lifts, set the grade with a laser, and tie in half-inch rebar on chairs so the steel rides dead-center in the slab where the freeze-thaw tensile stress actually pulls. Wire mesh, the cheap option, floats to the bottom during the pour and does nothing once winter starts working the concrete, which is exactly why so many of the older patios we replace failed.

Then comes the finish, which is where a Red Wing patio earns its keep. A light or heavy broom for grip, stamped slate, ashlar, or flagstone for the upgrade that suits an older home in the Pottery District or the historic neighborhoods, exposed aggregate for texture, integral color or acid stain for warmth. We pour a sample board so you see the cured color in your own daylight before the truck rolls, and we seal the stamped and colored patios to lock the color and shed the salt that Red Wing winters throw at them.

Red Wing is the largest town we serve to the north, so we are back through often, which makes a patio here easy to schedule and easy to come back and re-seal down the road. Tell us how you want to use the space and what view you are chasing, and we will walk the yard, talk through the levels, the finish, and the drainage, and hand you a free written quote with every line broken out. The owner does the walk, pours the patio, and stands behind it. Call (507) 735-8820 or reach us through the contact page.