How to Pour a Concrete Driveway | Ask This Old House

[Music] good morning mark hey britt nice to meet you my pleasure how you doing good so we're standing on the reason why i emailed you okay ever since we moved in four years ago our driveway has been a serious problem every time i drive my car up it's been bottoming out in the center section i can also see that you've used a bunch of different materials you have some pavers here aesthetically it's not the greatest and function wise we'll do what we can with it but these stone walls are great i love the landscape the house looks like it's just been painted so the only thing you really need to tie everything together would be a brand new driveway i can't agree more i think the i'd much rather weed my garden than have to weed my driveway everywhere all right that makes perfect sense so why don't we get some jackhammers some sledgehammers some shovels some picks and get this stuff out of here awesome all right let's go all right brit so first thing we have to do is call a utility locating service which i've already done that means there's no utilities in the driveway so we can just bang away at it this is basically a 10 by 10 pad which is certainly doable for two people before we go i should give you a little lesson on the jackhammer all right so i'm going to look for the weakest spot which is going to be right about here you can see all that soft material yep so when we actually crack this concrete it'll have somewhere to break off to you're gonna go down break that piece off you're gonna pull back get yourself set start banging again pounds easy all right here you go and don't forget that's the trigger all right so as soon as you touch that this thing's to go off get your gear on we need eyes and ears [Music] hey brit i'm gonna take this pick i'm gonna pry up those pieces you can just toss them into the pile all right awesome all right mark now that we're moving to the asphalt do we need to do anything differently well now that you bring it up we're going to switch hammers okay this one's a lot smaller and it's a lot lighter mainly because the material is a lot softer we've changed the bit on this one as you can see this one has a little bit of a scoop on it this hammer actually operates on a button not a trigger so as soon as you push that button it's going to go so and once we get done with all this we're going to cart everything off to actually two different places the concrete is recycled in a different place than the asphalt so the concrete's being shuffled off right now and once we break this up load it into the truck and it'll go to another recycling plant all right all right let's get going great [Music] this is a lot easier it's a lot easier right yeah that's it all right we're able to analyze the existing base luckily for us it's gravelly enough to leave in place i love to do that only because i know the stuff is settled it's been here for a long long time so it's where it's supposed to be all i want to do is run the compactor on it just to make sure do our due diligence after that we will bring in some three-quarter inch stone just for proper draining next we'll run the compactor over the stone hey mark what's that for what this is is just a fiber board but because we know the new concrete is going to be moving differently than the stone in the existing concrete which is the garage and the sidewalk we want to make sure we put an expansion buffer in there so when everything is moving it's moving into a soft area not something that's rigid and hard it was actually part of the downfall of the original driveway so we're going to alleviate that problem okay but going down the stone walls this is actually the same thing it's just a buffer but it's made of styrofoam what's going to be different about the front and the sidewalk going down those stone walls is all the inconsistencies that the stonewall provides so that's why we want to use a flexible material like this and then of course the concrete will keep it secure all right brit so what we're doing right now is very important this is our reinforcement so we lay this wire down and when we're pouring the concrete we'll pick it up halfway to make sure it's in the concrete but it's a step we can't miss this is going to keep the concrete together all right that's great so are we all ready to pour them yes we are let's get at it awesome all right brit so the truck just pulled up but let's do a quick review we had two choices asphalt and concrete we chose concrete just because it's long lasting it's a tough winter up here in new england so we did need something that was going to be sturdy we're going to go about six inches we know we have car traffic back and forth so we want to make sure we're thick enough we're going to use a very strong concrete which is about 5000 psi which is pounds per square inch okay the coloration we're going to stay with the normal gray to put a color in up here in new england is tough it doesn't wear so well so we'll leave that part out of it but other than that i think we're ready to go awesome all right grab your shovel do [Music] this is called a bowl float is going to even out all the low spots and knock down all the high spots you got it right there you're a natural yep i'm gonna take it from you in a minute because you're gonna put me out of a job soon mark when we're done leveling this off and smoothing it out how are we going to finish the edge well because we've always had a unique situation here right we knew we had to customize a little bit and what i'm going to do is curl the edge back with this trowel that'll give you easy in easy out right because we've got a curve there but what it's also going to do is channel the water that runs down the hill awesome all right brit so we're finally here ready to do the finish this is going to be simple but it's going to be exactly what we want and that's skid resistant so if you take the broom which is what is going to provide us with that skid resistance you want to start up there okay and then all you're going to do is pull back and if pulling this pull back is is good for you like that that's great if not you just walk it back right out into the street all right yep little hard to handle go down as soft as you can that's great don't worry a little overlap more than two inches is fine all right brit this is the last pass and we're done wow looks great great now all we have to do is let it set up and you're good to go wow mark it looks amazing all right i am happy as heck because this is exactly what i wanted it was the missing piece for the aesthetics of the house and now you can see the way that concrete floats into that wall how it floats into this wall i'm just happy with it yeah it looks amazing anything i should know about maintenance going forward well what you're going to want to do is stay off of it for at least seven days that's when it's set it's actually a 28 day cure but you'll get away with the seven uh and the other thing is absolutely no salt uh actually look down at the walkway right now and you can see all those pock marks that's from the salt being spread or salt coming off the street during the winter but that is the reason why we never use salt okay awesome so other than that you should be ready to go that's amazing it looks great and i can't believe how awesome everything was all right well you're a big help thanks mark thanks brit see ya [Music] thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button to make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed

Channel: This Old House

Views: 305,683

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, driveways, concrete, masonry, Mark McCullough

Id: fvz_22dpteg

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022