Driveway paving

Having your driveway paved can be a fantastic thing.  Having a smooth surface for kids to play their games on is leaps and bounds above what a gravel driveway has to offer.  Skateboards, rollerblades and even bikes and trikes will now be useable within view of your front window, keeping your children off the street.  How about a game of basketball or even ball hockey?  Makes a big difference playing on pavement, and not having to make a trip to the park every time you want to play a game.  If you are anything like me, and you have to make that extra effort to go somewhere else, you just won’t play at all.

Perhaps there is a shade-tree mechanic in your household and you don’t have a garage or free garage space to work under a car.  If you’ve ever tried to roll a creeper on gravel, or outright lie down on gravel under a jacked up car, you’ll understand the benefits of driveway paving.

What a difference, from a rough perpetually potholed, weedy gravelly driveway to the fresh clean cut, smooth black pavement. Driveway paving is a significant way to improve the look and value of your home. A whole world of styling opportunities open up as well, with bordering and accents with patio pavers and walkways, etc.

Care for the pavement is not as much as one might think, especially considering that gravel has to be maintained as well. This is especially so if you live in a winter climate and have your driveway plowed, and come spring, you find half of your driveway’s gravel spread across your lawn where the snow banks were. Raking gravel off lawn is not exactly an efficient, or enjoyable process. If you clear you own driveway in winter with a snowblower, not having to deal with gravel projectiles being shot at your neighbor’s BMW is usually a good thing. Or not having gravel jam up and damage the blowers auger, for that matter, is also a bonus. 

Driveway paving isn’t quite a simple as checking your yellow pages, calling all a few local paving companies, getting quotes and going with the cheapest one. Definitely do get a few quotes, but I assure you that you do get what you pay for. The prep work for a durable longer lasting paving job is paramount, and that will be a big part of the cost. Digging down to a proper depth and the removal of soil and clay is necessary, before laying a sub bed of the proper crushed stone aggregate (typically 6-8 inches). The sub-base should be smooth and firm with special attention given to proper drainage grade. Pouring the hot mix asphalt over an improperly prepared base will be cheaper, but will significantly shorten the life of your paved driveway. Having cracks and unevenness show up only a few years later will make you sorry you ever had it paved (cheaply). Having to remove asphalt is a costly process.

A quality driveway paving job should last well over 20 years with minimal maintenance (ie. sealing). Actual climate and use will vary that number, but again, the most important factor is the sub-base prep work. Another factor in cost and durability is the final thickness of the asphalt layer.

The compacted and finished asphalt should be a minimum of 2” thick.  Make sure your contractor specifies the “compacted thickness” in the quote to avoid confusion, as the loose hot mix asphalt thickness will be greater.  For an excellent durable finish, request a 2” compacted hotmix asphalt base, followed by a 1.5” top course.

Water needs to be drained off the pavement.  You don’t want water settling on any possible low spots anymore than it has to, and more importantly having the water drain away from your house, and not into it, make the drainage pitch of the asphalt grade very significant.  The pavement should have a gradual slope from the center crown to the edge.  Typically a quarter in per foot slope is used.

I don’t intend to belabor the topic of the different gravel mixes in detail.  Typically however, a class 1 mix is suitable for the hot mix base asphalt course, and a class 2 can be used for the top course, but some may prefer a finer appearing “driveway mix.”  A class 2 mix is generally used to top roads and parking lots.  It doesn’t hurt to enquire.  A good contractor, however, should ensure that the appropriate mixes are used given the climate, as colder climate driveway paving has different requirements than warmer climates.