Replacing a driveway?

March 22, 2009 11:04 AM

I'd like to tear up and replace my parents' sagging brick driveway this summer. What am I getting myself in to? Have any recommendations?

My parents have a roughly 20 x 30 foot brick driveway that is starting to sag quite a bit in a couple spots. The bricks need to be pulled up and new bedding needs to be added underneath.

Should I be tearing out the entire driveway? Should I use all new bricks or reuse the ones already there? How long might this take? Is there an easy way to split this task up into pieces that many people can do (other than the obvious part of putting the bricks back in)?

Should I just pay someone else to do it?

posted by yellowbkpk to home & garden (11 comments total)

Others will give you valuable information about construction materials and techniques- I just want to reply to your final question with a personal observation. I've been doing a lot of outdoor maintenance the last few years and have found myself *really enjoying* these projects. It's very different from the salaried work I do, I love the way the job is really finished when it's done and I even like the general tiredness and muscle aches from working with my body all day. Of course, YMMV.
posted by carterk at 11:12 AM on March 22

It would probably be cheaper & easier to replace the driveway with pavement. Sell the old bricks to fund the project.
posted by torquemaniac at 11:13 AM on March 22

On a more practical note:

1) Pulling up and stacking the bricks. Fun fun fun!
2) Digging out the current substructure, if necessary. A blast!
3) You can probably have a truck dump new material directly in the cleared driveway (you'll probably want to go with 4"- 8" of 3/8" crushed gravel, depending on your parents' winter weather/susceptibility to frost heave)
4) You'll want to tamp this material down after 'leveling' it- this can be done by hand or with (rented) power tools. Hand tampers work fine but will cause sore back muscles. Depending on the surrounding grade, you'll want your drive to be a bit higher in the middle and/or at one end so's the water will run off.
5) Top the gravel with an inch or so of sand. 'Level' and tamp this as well.
6) Every situation is different, but I'd consider using perforated bricks that allow water to drain through. You plant these with grass or thyme. Other materials include flagstone (my favorite, but tricky) and different pavers. Of course, when I put a driveway in, I just used crushed gravel, and it works *just fine*.

Enjoy!
posted by carterk at 11:23 AM on March 22

I wouldn't replace it with pavement, but I think that brick driveways and walks have a lot of character.

How complicated it will be depends partly on the shape of the area that is paved with brick. A nice square or rectangular area will be much easier then an area with curved or angled edges. You can get a pretty good idea by looking at the bricks at the edge of the paved area that are cut to a different shape. The more of these there are, and the more varied shapes that they come in, the tougher it will be to get them back together in the right place.

You can do just the part that is depressed, especially if it's just a few square feet. It can be a bit finicky to get them all leveled out correctly if you just replace a small part.

The process is roughly that you take up the brick, if the bricks vary in shape it's best to have someplace that you can lay them that will make it easy to put them back where they came from. Then you would flatten out the material underneath, adding gravel at the bottom and sand on top. If you are doing just a small part of the surface this is where you want to adjust things so that it is all level. Put in a few bricks and check the surface to make sure it's flat. Then you lay in the brick, leaving a small gap in between the individual bricks. Then you pour sand on top of the bricks and sweep in around so it falls into the cracks. This holds the bricks in place.

That's the gist of it. If you are interested in doing the whole thing, I would consider going to a book store or to Amazon and buying a book on the subject. This will likely not be a huge expense compared to purchasing sand and gravel to level the entire driveway and there are some things that might come into play depending on a number of factors that aren't in your post. Things like the current condition of the brick, what kind of ground might be underneath, the condition of the materials that were used to edge the brick, etc. These would likely be discussed in a book about putting in brick walks or driveways.
posted by jefeweiss at 11:37 AM on March 22

Whoever laid the bricks evidently took shortcuts with the substrate; with enough substrate, properly compacted, a driveway shouldn't sag.

If it were me I'd check the depth of substrate in several places, and get some advice from somewhere like here (UK site but the best paving resource on the web). If your substrate isn't deep enough you really need to dig it all out and start again. Or if you're lucky, it just wasn't compacted enough, and you can level it, compact it properly, and lay the brick again.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 11:44 AM on March 22

Should I just pay someone else to do it?

I would at least get an estimate or two. Home improvement can mushroom big time, and if this is for someone else, well- stress on the relationship can happen.
posted by IndigoJones at 12:02 PM on March 22

This is in southern Wisconsin, where we are quite likely to get plenty of heaving due to temperature differences. Also, the driveway is rectangular with a little brick path to the front yard. I'm more worried about the druvway than the path.

The brick driveway is a fairly important part of the character of the house (and sets it apart from the neighbors in a very nice way), so I would prefer to not use concrete.

Thanks for all these answers. Very helpful!
posted by yellowbkpk at 12:49 PM on March 22

When I'm considering doing a home-improvement project myself, I always get some people in for quotes. I talk to them about it, how they'd do it, why they'd use that method instead of another method, the materials, etc etc. If you get someone who really knows their stuff and is willing to talk, you can find out a lot. This is also a good technique for finding a good person in general. You might decide you can do it yourself, or you might decide it's too big a job and then you've found someone good. Just make sure you don't make it clear that you're considering doing it yourself.
posted by thebazilist at 4:03 PM on March 22

I would just repair the areas that are sagging. Pull the bricks up, redo the base material, relay the bricks.

If it's sagging in an area where the cars sit or drive on, I would lay them maybe a half inch high, and then use the car to smash them down.

(Check out Ask This Old House- they've done projects like this. There is a specific type of gravel that you should use that is supposed to shift. I think it's a crushed stone of some kind. Lots of pieces of different sizes and shapes that sort of lock together when they are bedded in. And then I think they used stone dust as the top layer. I seem to remember that sand wasn't the preferred material because it shifts and doesn't compact well. Where the stone dust compacts and stays put.)
posted by gjc at 4:41 PM on March 22

I suggest doing it yourself, it's fun and not too difficult since you can reuse the bricks. Depending on the size of the affected area, and the condition of the rest of the driveway, you may want to only do the bad patches.

Tips: Even if your bricks are very plain, if they aren't all uniform try to remember the pattern when you remove them, because you know that this pattern works and you might not be able to get a good fit if you don't reuse the same pattern. IIRC from when I did a walkway, I used (as per a suggestion) crushed rock called "screening", which is made up of various sizes of rock pieces so that it compacts well and allows for drainage. Also, we used a special sand that you sweep into the cracks of the assembled bricks and then add water, and it hardens (sort of like cement) and makes the whole thing much more solid -- prevents grass/weeds from growing between bricks too. But, IANA contractor, so you may want to get more advice.

Note that it's easy to underestimate the volume of crushed rock that you will need. We bought what we thought would be more than enough and ended up needing double. Don't worry if you get too much: In the summer, I often see people with mounds of dirt/gravel in front of their house with a sign that says "free"; I guess they overestimated the amount they needed. Anyways, these mounds are always gone in a day or two -- someone always needs FREE gravel and dirt!

The hard part is leveling it and tamping it well. Keep in mind that if it's not perfectly level, you'll have a hard time shovelling snow, since your shovel will keep jamming on the bricks that are a little above the others. And if you're only doing a limited area, you need to consider how this (hopefully) perfect area you're going to create will fit with the rest of the driveway.
posted by Simon Barclay at 8:31 PM on March 22

Pay a guy.

We did it (in Rhode Island) a few years ago. It was a joy to watch other people do a lot of hard work instead of me, and they also had the experience, huge machines, and materials supplier contracts to do it right the first time.

Also, think about what else you can have a contractor do while he's there with heavy equipment. For example, while the front yard was a crater, we took the opportunity to have the guy rip out a sidewalk with his backhoe (saved me two days' work), and also bury a drain pipe to keep the rainspouts from emptying right onto the driveway (thereby turning it into a skating rink a dozen times each winter). I think he wanted an extra fifty bucks for burying the drain, which was a steal. His idea, too: he had a couple of useful suggestions.

Last, my sons freaked out for the chance to see the trucks up close. We set them up in the living room window and they were mezmerized. They still like looking at those pictures!
posted by wenestvedt at 7:01 AM on March 23