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Concrete Paver Driveway

The completed concrete paver driveway

The project was actually started in 1980 when we decided to make a half circle driveway in front of the house in addition to the one already leading to the garage on the right side. After excavating the loam and adding it to the center oval, I brought in highway fill and spread it out on the clay subsoil. The highway fill would not turn to mud when wet and would make a good base for the future brick driveway. It worked well but my wife did not appreciate us tracking dirt and grit into the house.

Clay brick walkways

in running bond pattern

Some years later, I built clay brick walkways all around the back of the house. It alleviated the tracking in of dirt in back and really improved the property there. Also, it was good practice for the future driveway. The style I chose for the walkway is called running bond. It has advantages. As the bricks follow the curves, no cuts are needed along any of the edges. The seven lines of brick start off staggered, the end of one brick begins in the middle of the one it is next to. As the bricks follow the curve , the ends no longer line up as before. Eventually, to prevent two adjacent bricks from lining up end next to end, it is necessary to cut some bricks shorter to improve the staggered effect. But cutting bricks straight across is so much easier than cutting the angles required for other designs.

Finally we decided to pave the driveway in 2003. The first step was to choose the best material for our home. As the house is old, I did not want to use asphalt or cement. Cobblestones are nice but expensive and slippery when wet. As I already have the clay brick walkways, brick seemed ideal. But clay brick might easily crack under the weight of a vehicle. Concrete pavers, however,are very strong and have similar dimensions. The "Boston Colonial Paver" style has the same blend of colors as the clay bricks in the walks.

Lastly, the edges are beveled so that snow removal equipment will not chip the edges or lift them up.

The first step to creating an accurate drawing is to take exact measurements of the site. I made a sketch and added the dimensions. Then I used a simple CAD program to produce the drawing shown above. Based the drawing, I calculated the square footage for the pavers and sand - 1,800sq. ft.

 

Drawing of planned driveway	Using string and stakes, driveway is laid out based on drawing

Part of the driveway is bordered by stone and required no edge restraints. The remainder did and that is calculated in lineal feet. 10" spikes are driven through pre-drilled holes in the strips of plastic edging at the ends and 2' apart in between. Properly done, the plastic edging is never seen.

Except for highway fill as a base (critical for a successful and permanent driveway), the bill of materials was only three items:

-Pavers (in this case, 4.5 per square foot) - 1800 sq. ft. x 4.5 pavers or 8100 pieces.

-Masonry sand. Based on the area, the supplier used tables to calculate the amount for 1 1/8" thickness - 11 tons.

-Edge restraints in lineal feet. The type purchased were 8' long.

Two 'sloping' boards lead towards road

and leveling gage is placed across driveway

Backhoe removed old

asphalt and large stones

It was necessary to have a friend with a backhoe remove what remained of the old asphalt and rocks that were part of the original straight driveway to the right of the house.

The next step was to spend 2 1/2 weeks leveling, forming the correct slopes on, and compacting the fill material.

Using two perfectly straight 2" x 6" x 12' planks fitted with handles on top, I sloped and compacted a 1' wide section in the middle of and running the length of the driveway, starting at the high end and working my way towards the road. I overlapped the planks as I worked my way down so the slope would be gradual and continuous. When I reached the road, the compacted strip was too high and the pavers would have stuck up above the road pavement. It needed to be 2 1/2" (paver) plus 1" (sand thickness) below the pavement. So I had to start all over again. Good thing that I had only done the center strip and not the whole width of driveway!

Once the center strip was lined up, I again started at the upper end, this time with a 2" x 4" x 10' stud as a gage and with a 4' level screwed to the top. With the center of the gauge resting cross-wise on the center strip, I would level off and compact the fill on both sides of the gage and repeat this process every 3' down the driveway following the slope of the center strip. Using this tedious but simple method, I was able to slope, level and compact the the driveway without special equipment. All parts of the driveway had natural slope towards the road except the part by the front entrance. There, the drive is parallel to the road and had little natural slope. It was necessary to have the drive slope a minimum of 1/4 per foot from the house towards the road (that is 2 1/2" over the width of the driveway).

The hand compactor I used had a 6" square of steel at the bottom and a wooden handle. I simply pounded the fill and then added more fill and repeated the process until even with the gauges.

 

Oak skreed is dragged across pipes

used as thickness gages for bed of sand

The pavers were laid in a bed of sand on top of the compacted fill. It was easy to get a perfectly flat layer of sand at the right thickness by using three 1 1/8" x10' electrical conduit pipes. As seen in the picture, I placed the pipes on the compacted fill, one in the middle and the others a foot from the edges. I double checked the levelness of the pipes with the 10' level gage, adding small stone shims if necessary. After spreading sand, I used a screed made from a 2" x 4" for the handle and a 6' x 6" x 3/4" piece of oak for the blade. It was heavy but the weight was necessary to keep the blade against the pipes. By sliding the screed along the pipes, the sand leveled off perfectly. I only advanced the sand 3 or 4 feet at a time. After removing the pipes, I carefully filled in the spaces left behind with additional sand. A trowel and a plasterer's smoothing tool did the job. Finally, I was ready to lay the pavers!

Starting at the road, I staggered the pavers and cut half pavers to fill in the empty spaces where the driveway begins at the road. As the pavers have spacers already designed into them, they can be placed tightly against each other. I would place 6 pavers and then tap each one into the sand 4 times with a rubber mallet. This initial compaction allowed me to use the finished part of my driveway as the work proceeded. Good quality knee pads were a must here.

Pavers 'flow' like a river

As a crooked driveway will easily show up (especially a long one), I always worked to a very taut string running down the center of the future driveway.

For the straight driveway, work continued as described. For the curved section, some adjustment was necessary as the work progressed because more bricks were required on the outside of the curve than on the inside. And as explained earlier, eventually it was necessary to fill in with partial straight cut pavers so that two brick ends did not line up side-by-side. Actually I found it easier to just leave the spaces empty until later and then cut all the partial pavers for that curve at the same time. As the length of the spaces varied, I was able to get several cuts out of a paver to use as spacers.

Eventually, I reached the point in the long driveway where the left half side had to begin curving along the 12' radius for the front oval. The 5' width on the right side continued on straight towards the garage. As the curve progressed, spaces occurred where the curved pavers against the straight run edge formed angled spaces. Again, these were left empty until the curve was finished.

 

 

Water cooled tile cutter worked on bricks

Pipe grooves are filled with sand

To make it more complicated, a 4' radius on the house side of the front oval had to be "woven in" as shown in the drawing.

To cut the pavers, a wet saw with a diamond blade is required. Trying to split pavers with any expectation of accuracy is unreasonable. A few years ago the only choice was to rent the wet saw at "X" dollars a day. I took a chance and bought the wet saw (shown) for cutting tile for $300 and it cut the pavers very well. With it I was able to make straight cuts (90 deg.) and very acute angle cuts also. Because it couldn't cut all the way through the paver, I finished the last 1/4" by turning the paver over on a hard, flat surface and splitting it the rest of the way with a brick chisel and hammer. Then I resold the saw for half price as I didn't need it any more.

 

Compacting the pavers

The final step was to compact the pavers using a compactor which I rented for the day. While my wife swept sand into the path of the machine, I vibrated the pavers causing them to compact and the surface sand to fall into the 1/16" space between the bricks.

A few winters has gone by and the new driveway is still smooth and beautiful. And using the snow blower was so much easier than for previous winters!

Generally speaking, it is hard for New Englanders to talk to strangers. For the two months it took me to do the job, people were constantly crossing the street or stopping their cars to ask questions or comment on the driveway. Sometimes my wife had to find some excuse to call me in so that I could then get back to work.

Before I start a project, I investigate how much it would cost to have someone else do it. When I am finished, I usually understand why companies charge what they do but I still like doing it myself.

 

 

A year later

 

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