Hello, this is my first post, and I obviously need some help deciding on what way I should go with paving my drivway...
I live in Northeastern PA and we do get some pretty bad winters here... not so bad the past few year though....Our home was built in 2004, the lot was previously a wooded lot. The driveway is completely flat as well..When I had the driveway cut in,(about 4500 sq. ft) I had them excavate down 18" from the surface of the ground, and had it filled with shale to provide a good base. Once the house was complete, I had 40 ton of modified laid down. About 2 years after that when the modified was packed in, I had 40 ton of 2b gravel spread down, and thats whats on there now..Since I now have 2 small children, they need a place to ride their bike, so we decided to get some quotes on paving the driveway..So far I have gotten 3 quotes from reputable contractors in my area, but they gave me two choices...
1. 2 1/2" of binder , with 1 1/2" ID2 wearing surface
or
2. A single 3" layer ..(One contractor said he would use an ID3 compound, (which I assume has some larger rocks mixed with smaller rock) and the other contractor is going to use just ID2 surface for the 3"
Now, all of the contractors, didnt push one or the other, but it seemed like they favored the single 3" layer.. The Two layer is 25% more money than the single layer as well..For my application for a standard driveway, what is best route to take... I dont want to cheap out and have the driveway fall apart, but I dont want to overspend if I dont have to... Looks arent as important to me as durability... Any help would be great.
Your story sounds just like mine. I live in Northern Indiana, about 1/2 way between Toledo and Indianapolis, so our climate is the same. My home was built in 1997. I bought it in 2003 with little or no drive. I brought in 120 tons or so of #53's the first year then each year after that I had about 40 more tons brought in for each of the first 3 or 4 years. Last spring it was getting rough so I got 3 quotes like you.
My drive is 4800 sq ft and what I decided to do was 600 sq ft in 6" of 4000 psi concrete. I have a neighbor with a dump truck so I dug it out with my tractor and then had a company come in and do the pour. Concrete was $1200 and the labor was about $500.
The rest of the drive was put down in asphalt. 2" of heavy binder and 1" top coat smooth finish for 3" total. I had all 3 quotes done the same. The 3 quotes were $11,000, $9,000, and $7,500. I actually liked the cheapest guy the best and the asphalt plant where they all 3 were getting the product is only 3 miles from my home so I went there and talked to them. They said the cheapest guy does lots of work and has WalGreens, Dollar General, and a few other chains on the account. What really sold me was out of the 3 that I talked to the manager of the plant about is they were the only one that PAYS all the bills on time.
I also called the BBB and in 30 years they had 1 complaint. I figure you can not make everyone happy. Anyway, the $7500 price was to grade, compact, and install. I was also told by the owner he had big contracts that he needed to keep happy due to them being the bread and butter of the company and he only picked up residential jobs to fill in down time for his crew. Long story short it took about a month to get to me. Day one they came and graded and compact the job. Day two they layed all the asphalt, day 3 they came and did some final clean up for maybe 2 hours and collect the money.
I payed nothing till the job was done. Anyone who wants something up front does not have the capital or credit to keep a company going so I would run.
Total cost was $10,000 or a little less for 4,800 sq ft of drive of which 600 is concrete at 6" thick and 4000 psi.
One other thing, I asked about a single layer and no one around here would do it. They said it breaks up too much and if you just use base for that layer it lets in too much water and causes cracks with freeze and thaw.
Plowing is a dream now with the rig in my avatar.
Chris
