DIY Driveway Strip

A common problem

For many of us, the ugly old ribbon strip driveway is an unfortunate reality every morning we get in the car. Too often for homeowners, this type of paving problem is relegated right down the bottom of a homeowners never-ending ‘Santa’ style to do list .. “I’m going to get around to this one day” or more optimistically “once I win lotto”.

Demolition is a headache.. Avoid it!

To repave or lay new concrete, you need to demolish your existing concrete driveway.

Sending plain concrete to ‘the tip’ (or resource recovery plants) is free, however most concrete driveways are less than 50 years old and thus have steel reinforcing in it. Waste recycling plants will charge for this grade of ‘contaminated’ concrete at approx. $800/tonne which equates to approximately 15sqm of your ‘typical’ 150mm thick concrete driveway slab. On top of this your contractors will charge landfill costs partly reflecting their time in transporting it.

With demolition, have you thought about costs to move pipes? Contractors can operate under contract that assumes no underlying utilities, and costs can mount if pipes are discovered. How about requirement to move fences and gates? What about the time, mess and possible damage to your grass and landscaping.

When you start to get quotes to resurfacing or repaving these strip driveways, they often ‘come in at the thousands of dollars’. Slowly, costs and hassle on these type of explain why so many of us put up with cracked, unsighly, hazardous driveway strips.

Rethink the problem

You don’t need to go all-out and rip up all that old cement. You don’t even have to get paving contractors in! This video demonstrates the problem can be solved by bit of prior planning and preparation, combined with choice of a novel product like StoneSet resin bound stone. 

What if I have grass?

The video is quite straight forward in the way the product is installed. If you have a different strip down the centre of your driveway, it needs to be prepared to a standard where it is suitably sound for vehicle traffic.

For example, if you have grass, or compacted mud and stone, or any compacted soft surface, this must be properly prepped. The best way to do this is to remove what is there to a depth of approx 165mm and lay a 150mm stable crushed rock base, using ‘compacted road base’. Leaving 16mm for the StoneSet layer at the top.

Because the centre strip rarely gets vehicle traffic, it is possible to manually compact the road base rather than the industry standard of hiring a mechanical plate compactor. Some reports have been made of watering down this base whilst driving on it with your car to compact this layer! This is possible, however its very important that the road base is allowed to completely dry when taking this approach.

Were always happy to discuss your options on DIY projects like these. Please just pick up the phone and contact us and we can be more specific to your requirements.

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