Installing a new asphalt driveway

[BWR1953]

Today I got some good news. The eldest brother of my buddies tested negative, his symptoms cleared up and he's back to work at his regular job! Maybe he'll have time to help me in the next couple of weeks.

He also recommended a nearby shop that makes custom hydraulic hoses while you wait, so I went there this afternoon and got two custom made hoses which fit correctly. (I also returned the short ones for a full refund.)

New hoses to replace the short ones.


Yesterday we went fishing so didn't make any progress but tomorrow we should get back to work on the tractor. Hopefully, we can get the stubborn hoses off and get it running again.

 

[Rabbit929]

Don't let the driveway installers fool you.
Sealing the driveway is just cosmetic and does NOT need to be done.
Have you ever seen public roads sprayed with liquid tar?
My old boss/owner never pushed sealing even when times got difficult.

It’s true both ways.
sealing helps keep water from freezing and splitting up the asphalt, though it’s not required.
mid I spent the money on the driveway, I wouldn’t hesitate to seal it every 5-10 years, or when time and interest in the project permits, but you won’t lose you ass if you just don’t do it.
it would actually be WAY more benefitial to lay down chip seal, and rolling it in with a rubber tire roller.
This creates a rock layer as a wear point so your AC oil doesn’t get spent up from heavy traffic.
Again, this is overkill for a driveway, but I just like the way chip seal looks. As far as preservation, two lifts for a total of 3” is the best way to go, but 1 5/8 is more than enough for most people.

just don’t taper it off at the end of the driveway, as anything less than an inch will bust up. Pick up the screed abruptly, and use gravel to ramp up to that point.

 

[BWR1953]

It’s true both ways.
sealing helps keep water from freezing and splitting up the asphalt, though it’s not required.
mid I spent the money on the driveway, I wouldn’t hesitate to seal it every 5-10 years, or when time and interest in the project permits, but you won’t lose you ass if you just don’t do it.
it would actually be WAY more benefitial to lay down chip seal, and rolling it in with a rubber tire roller.
This creates a rock layer as a wear point so your AC oil doesn’t get spent up from heavy traffic.
Again, this is overkill for a driveway, but I just like the way chip seal looks. As far as preservation, two lifts for a total of 3” is the best way to go, but 1 5/8 is more than enough for most people.

just don’t taper it off at the end of the driveway, as anything less than an inch will bust up. Pick up the screed abruptly, and use gravel to ramp up to that point.

My driveway will be paved by a professional paving company, so I won't have much to do with it other than spend money.

But, I'll keep an eye on the pavement where it ends at the gate. Might be a good idea for me to install a little road cloth and some road base for a few feet outside the gate.

 

[BWR1953]

Today, the boy and I completed replacing all of the rotted loader hoses on my little Ford tractor. Everything has been tested and all is working normally! We're really happy about that.

Tomorrow we're planning on taking a whack at installing the retaining wall panels. Should be an interesting time.

 

[BWR1953]

The boy and I got the retaining wall installed today, including the top cap. It took 12 hours, about 3.5 hours of which were dealing with teenage boy issues!

We started at 0830 and finished well after sunset. But it's done!















Top cap going on.





Finished! (And I'm exhausted! )

 

[BWR1953]

Well guys, the project came to a screeching halt this week. I'm in the hospital again. Been here 4 days. Ugh.

After we got the retaining wall done last week, we took the weekend off and did fun stuff but I did order dirt to be delivered this week. That obviously didn't happen. So I'll have to reorder.

The good news is that it looks like I may be discharged from the hospital later this afternoon. Keeping my fingers crossed for that.

Meanwhile, the young neighbor who helped me with this project ended up getting HIS driveway paved yesterday! I'm envious!

 

[BWR1953]

...just don’t taper it off at the end of the driveway, as anything less than an inch will bust up. Pick up the screed abruptly, and use gravel to ramp up to that point.

If you look at the pix in Post #46, it looks like my neighbor's pavement was joined with a square abutment at the center. From the pic, it looks like the two outer side pieces are then sloped down toward the edges, getting thinner along the way. And at the edges, it looks like they piled up some asphalt and then manually tamped it down in a taper.

I dunno... is that a good practice?

 

[cptbill]

That's a lot of asphalt

 

[BWR1953]

Duh. I forgot to hit "Post" on this last night.

I'm home!

And the first thing I did was to check out my neighbor's paving job, even before I went to my house.

In person, it looks much better than in the pix that I posted earlier today. This evening I took a perfunctory glance at it from inside the truck and it looked good. I'll get over there this weekend and get a more detailed look at it then.

 

[BWR1953]

I went over this afternoon and had a good look.

The asphalt is very thin at the edges; maybe 1/2" thick. Not good. I saw one place which had been run over from the grass to the asphalt and it was already broken/smooshed down. And that was from a single track of a GMC Tracker, a light car.

 

[BWR1953]

That's a lot of asphalt

Yes, it is. Mine will be similar in overall square footage.

But I'm not sure that I'll use my neighbor's contractor. The quality of the work doesn't meet my standards.

 

[Rabbit929]

If you look at the pix in Post #46, it looks like my neighbor's pavement was joined with a square abutment at the center. From the pic, it looks like the two outer side pieces are then sloped down toward the edges, getting thinner along the way. And at the edges, it looks like they piled up some asphalt and then manually tamped it down in a taper.

I dunno... is that a good practice?

It’s good practice to make sure your edges are deeper than average, hand tamping the stuff, aka the slope on the edge, helps bold the oil and rocks better and form a better seal.
1/2 of asphalt isn’t enough, as it will spread at the weight of a lawn mower, and eventually bust up. It would actually be best to have it a little deeper at the edges and add dirt to match the grass to the height of the asphalt to ensure you don’t have a lot of breakage at the edges.

 

[Rabbit929]

this is an untamped sluff

and this is a rolled sluff. It’s not an end of the word issue, but a rolled/tamped sluff is ALOT better in means of durability.

 

[BWR1953]

this is an untamped sluffView attachment 336441

and this is a rolled sluff. It’s not an end of the word issue, but a rolled/tamped sluff is ALOT better in means of durability.View attachment 336442

Thanks for that info, very helpful!

Last night I went over to my friends house and spent an hour checking out his pavement and talking about his projects and mine.

It turns out that when the asphalt company showed up last week, he decided that he wanted to expand his job and changed the driveway width from 10' to 36' wide! A significant change.

He's still happy with his pavement job. His wife, kid, nephews and nieces all love the big asphalt slab. They started using it the evening it was finished.

The center section (strip) is a good 2.5" thick and then the side strips taper down from that to about an inch at the far edges. There were a couple of thinner spots, but he's okay with those. And the price increase for the added pavement was only $600. Not too shabby.

When I'm ready, I'll contact the contractor and have a serious talk with him about my pavement requirements. I've seen some of his other work and it looked good. So we'll see.

Another topic of discussion was lighting. My friend has a pair of big 36,000 lumen floodlights which work pretty well for his parking area. He said that when all he had was lime rock that it was too bright but that the blacktop pavement has toned it down nicely.

I'm still researching my lighting options and mounting, etc. Anybody have any thoughts about that?

 

[BWR1953]

So, there was "some" progress made today. There was also some conflict, confusion and decisions made as well. But progress is progress.

I only had 2 loads of dirt brought in this morning, instead of the 3-4 that I needed. The primary reason for the shortfall was that my existing driveway was too soft for the 70,000 pound trucks to bring the loads back to the work area. I'll address that issue once I get the 2 loads moved. It might take me a couple days to move those 2 loads using my little Ford 1210 tractor with loader and box blade. At least the weather is supposed to be cooler starting tomorrow.

Two piles which need to be moved a long way.


A buddy came over to visit this morning and the dirt piles dwarfed his Nissan Frontier.



As can be seen in this pic, the dirt is over 25 yards from where it needs to be. I spent an hour trying to move the stuff. Slow going! Ugh.


Sad progress. Hey, I'm a rookie!






Here is the little bit of nibbling that I was able to do on the piles so far.

 

[BWR1953]

More progress made yesterday.

After 3 hours of using my little tractor, I'd only managed to get a part of one pile moved.



So I called for backup and my neighbor friends came over to take care of business! The younger on my tractor and the elder on his big Massey Ferguson. The big Massey with a competent operator knocked down both piles and graded everything in 15 minutes!


The younger brother and I headed to HD to pick up supplies and it was dark when we returned. But the driveway is ready for more dirt!


This morning I called for 2 more loads of sand to be delivered on Monday.


Two loads ought to expand the left side pad quite nicely.

 

[BWR1953]

Uhhh... the driveway project was completed in August 2021, but thanks for the input.

 

[jbcurt00]

Uhhh... the driveway project was completed in August 2021, but thanks for the input.

They were Spammers & have been deleted w extreme prejudice

 

[BWR1953]

They were Spammers & have been deleted w extreme prejudice

Thank you!

I guess I really should bring this thread up to date, showing completion at least.

 

[alldodge]

I guess I really should bring this thread up to date, showing completion at least.

That would be yes, Da