Paving the driveway

[Ronald Blue]

Looks very nice, Ron! (Just be careful about ice melt products as they can damage concrete as you likely already know)

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I'm with Brian around "sealers" on asphalt.

Yes, salt and many chemical ice melt products can damage the concrete. They did a great job on it including the transition to the street. Melting off with the suns power usually works well even on concrete. About 130 yards of concrete total. We held off until I retired as my service truck was pushing 30,000 lbs and why risk damaging the concrete. It's about 2 months old now.

[Jim Becker]

It really is a magnificent driveway, Ronald!!

[Larry Frank]

The ice melt products subject is interesting. My front sidewalk curves downhill and I use ice melt stuff on it routinely for 40 years and no problems. I use pet safe on part of it and regular on the rest. Part of my driveway is concrete and use salt only infrequently but have some damage. It appears to me that some concrete is less vulnerable to the salt products.

The rest of my driveway is blacktop and lasted 16 years. I had it sealed every two years by a company that uses a good material. To me, it appears to get down in any cracks which reduces damage due to the freeze thaw cycles. I do not believe that it is just cosmetic.

A lot of the choices about driveway materials is based on location. The amount of ground heave do to freezing and the freeze thaw cycles make a big difference.

[Dave Anderson NH]

We just had our driveway repaved last year to replace the 22-year-old one. The contractor came in and removed the old asphalt, dug out the old gravel, and installed and compacted 8" of new gravel. They compacted with a large vibratory roller vehicle. The actual pavement was a 2" base coat covered with a 1.5" finer grain topcoat. Our town building code requires an 8" compacted gravel base and a minimum 2 inches of asphalt. The quality difference between the old driveway and the new on is fantastic. I really hate having to learn things the hard and expensive way.

[John K Jordan]

Good, solid construction - that doesn’t sound inexpensive! How long is the driveway?

JKJ

We just had our driveway repaved last year to replace the 22-year-old one. The contractor came in and removed the old asphalt, dug out the old gravel, and installed and compacted 8" of new gravel. They compacted with a large vibratory roller vehicle. The actual pavement was a 2" base coat covered with a 1.5" finer grain topcoat. Our town building code requires an 8" compacted gravel base and a minimum 2 inches of asphalt. The quality difference between the old driveway and the new on is fantastic. I really hate having to learn things the hard and expensive way.

[Jim Becker]

Dave that's a very good way to insure that the replacement driveway lasts a long time!

Around here, rather than two layers of asphalt (coarse base and then fine top coat) providers tend to use an "airport mix" as they call it which is a combination of both larger and finer particles in one shot for the typical 2-4" of asphalt used for a driveway.

[Dave Anderson NH]

From the street to the garage/barn concrete apron is 102 feet. The nice thing about it is that it is downhill (6ft difference) to the street and the driveway faces due south. This is really nice when you want a clear dry driveway after a 2" nuisance snow or after you leave an inch after snow blowing a foot of white sunshine.