A Wisconsin winter is hard on a driveway. Plows clip the edge at the street. Salt tracks in on every tire. Water gets into the joints, freezes, and pushes. By April, you're looking at cracks, a sunken slab at the garage door, and a puddle that never used to be there.
Before you call for a replacement quote, figure out what's actually wrong. Each problem has its own fix, its own price, and its own lifespan, and most of them aren't a new driveway. A sunken slab, for example, is a driveway lifting job, not a tear-out.
Match the Problem to the Fix
| What you see | Most likely fix |
|---|---|
| Open joints, gap at the house, thin cracks | Joint and crack sealing |
| A section dropped at a joint, rocks, or tips toward the garage | Lifting the sunken section |
| A puddle at the garage door, or a lip at the garage floor | Lifting the garage approach |
| A chipped corner, a pothole, or a small broken edge | Patching |
| Flaking, pitted, or rough surface across a wide area | Resurfacing, if the slab under it is sound |
| Broken into pieces, crumbling, or heaved up | Replacing that section, or the whole driveway |
What Each Repair Costs, Fixes, and Lasts
| Repair | Typical cost | What it fixes | What it doesn't | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joint and crack sealing | $5–$10 per linear foot with us, depending on joint size and cleanout; cost guides list general professional caulking at about $1.25–$4 per foot | Keeps water out of joints, cracks, and the house gap | Doesn't fix sunken or broken slabs | Inspect every spring and touch up as needed |
| Lifting a sunken section | $550–$800 per section with us; cost guides list foam lifting at roughly $5–$25 per sq ft | Raises the slab, fills the void, restores drainage | Doesn't fix broken or crumbling concrete, can't lower heaved slabs | Cost guides rank foam among the longest-lasting lifting methods |
| Lifting 2–3 sections | $1,100–$2,400 with us | Same as above, across a bigger area | Same as above | Same as above |
| Patching | Cost guides list small crack and pothole fixes at about $100–$400 | Chips, spalls, broken corners | Large areas; patches often show | Varies; expect some touch-ups after hard winters |
| Resurfacing | Cost guides list about $3–$5 per sq ft for basic work | A worn, flaking surface on a sound slab | Sunken, heaved, or structurally cracked slabs | Cost guides cite about 8–15 years |
| Replacing one section | About $7–$21 per sq ft with tear-out; small jobs often cost more per foot | A broken or crumbling slab | The rest of the driveway; new concrete won't match the old | Roughly 20–30 years if built right |
| Full replacement | About $7–$21 per sq ft with tear-out; plain gray is at the low end | Everything at once | The soil and drainage, unless those get fixed too | Roughly 20–30 years if built right |
The rest of this guide goes through each concrete driveway repair in plain terms, and our price overview shows how our work is priced.
Joint and Crack Sealing: The Cheapest Fix That Matters
Your driveway has joints on purpose. They give the concrete a place to crack neatly as it shrinks and moves. But an open joint is also a channel for water straight into the soil under the slab.
In Wisconsin, that water does two kinds of damage. It washes soil out, which is how slabs end up sinking. And when it freezes, it expands and pushes the slab around.
Driveway joint sealing means cleaning out the joint, setting a foam backer rod where the joint is deep, and filling it with a flexible sealant that moves with the concrete. The same goes for the gap where your driveway meets the house or the garage slab, and for cracks wide enough to take on water.
Cost guides list general professional caulking at about $1.25–$4 per linear foot. With us, joint and crack caulking runs $5–$10 per linear foot, depending on how wide and deep the joints are, how much old caulk or rotted wood strip has to be dug out, and whether they need backer rod. Added to a lifting job, there's no separate caulking minimum, and a two-car driveway with 60 to 100 feet of joints lands around $300–$1,000. Bigger driveways, with 10 or more joints or more than 100 feet, can reach $1,000 or more. Booked on its own, caulking has a $275 minimum, which covers a small job of about 4 to 6 sidewalk joints, or up to about 30 feet.
Timing matters. Typical concrete joint sealants call for air and surface temperatures of at least 40°F, and joints that are clean, dry, and frost-free. Around here, that means spring through fall.
When you don't need us: A few short, thin cracks are a reasonable DIY job with a tube of self-leveling concrete sealant from the hardware store. Read the label for temperature and backer rod directions.
Lifting Sunken Sections and the Garage Approach
A section that dropped at a joint, rocks when you drive over it, or tips toward the house is usually sitting over a void. Foam lifting fills that void and raises the slab back up through dime-sized holes. You can drive on it the same day.
The garage approach is the section most likely to sink. It sits on the loosely backfilled soil along the garage foundation, and it catches meltwater off every car that pulls in. When it drops, water runs toward the garage instead of away, and a lip forms at the garage floor. Lifting it back to the right pitch fixes both.
With us, one section or a garage approach runs $550–$800, and two to three sections run $1,100–$2,400. Where you land depends mostly on how much empty space is under the slab. A section over a big washout from a downspout or sump line can run higher, and the quote will say so.
Patching
Patching fills chips, small potholes, and broken corners with a repair mortar. It's quick and cheap. Cost guides list small crack and pothole fixes around $100–$400.
Here's the catch. A thin skim of repair mortar has to hang onto old concrete through every Wisconsin winter, and water that gets behind it freezes and pries it off. Expect to redo some patches. They'll also look like patches, since new mortar rarely matches 15-year-old concrete. Patching is fine for a corner the plow chewed up. It's not a cure for a whole driveway that's flaking.
Resurfacing
Resurfacing puts a thin cement-based overlay over the old surface. Cost guides put basic resurfacing at about $3–$5 per square foot and say it lasts about 8–15 years.
It only works if the slab underneath is solid and level. Overlays tend to follow the slab under them, so a resurface over a sunken section is still a sunken section, and cracks underneath tend to come back through the new surface. If a section is low, lift it first, then resurface.
Full Replacement
Published cost guides put a new plain concrete driveway at roughly $6–$15 per square foot, plus about $1–$6 per square foot to tear out and haul away the old one. For a 20×24 two-car driveway (480 square feet), that works out to roughly $3,400–$10,000 all in, depending on your market and finish.
Before you sign, factor in:
- About a week before you park on it, and about four weeks for heavier vehicles, per industry guidance.
- No deicers the first year. Concrete industry guidance says to keep them off new concrete for its first year.
- Yard repair along the edges where the forms went.
- The street apron. In the City of Green Bay, the apron is in the public right-of-way, and building or rebuilding it takes a city-licensed sidewalk builder and a permit. Other communities have their own rules.
Some cost guides suggest considering replacement once a driveway is more than about 20 years old or around a quarter damaged.
The Wisconsin Factor: Freeze-Thaw, Salt, Plows, and the Apron
- Freeze-thaw. Water in joints and cracks freezes, expands, and widens them a little more each cycle. Keeping water out of the joints is the best defense you control.
- Salt. Deicers make freeze-thaw damage worse and are a major cause of flaking, or scaling. Concrete industry guidance says never to use ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate deicers on concrete, and to skip deicers entirely on concrete in its first year.
- Plows and blowers. Plow blades and snowblower scrapers catch raised edges and joints. A sunken or heaved slab with a lip is a magnet for chipped corners.
- The apron at the street. It takes the plow, the curb, the salt spray, and every car turning in. If yours is cracked or sunk, check with your city before doing anything, since aprons are often in the public right-of-way.
When the Driveway Is Done
Walk the driveway and count sections. For each one, ask: is it one piece, and is the top still hard and smooth? If most sections fail that test, you'd be paying to repair concrete that's on its way out. The same goes if the low spots are actually high spots (frost or roots pushed them up), or if you were planning to widen or reshape the driveway anyway. In those cases, put the money into new concrete, and make sure the base and drainage get fixed so the new driveway doesn't sink the way the old one did.
If most sections pass, and the trouble is a couple of low slabs plus open joints, repair wins easily.