How to install your own paver driveway: part 1 excavation.

Having worked now on my permits for the past 2 years and 1 month, I am nearing completion.  The last project to do is the paver driveway installation.  To get to this point I have finished the boat house which is discussed at this blog, the cedar covered porch which is discussed in this blog and the expansion of a single car garage into a two car garage which is discussed in this blog.

For the paver driveway project, I found the YouTube.com videos lacking so I ordered many used books from Amazon.com for a couple bucks each.   The best book I found (and the most expensive) is Driveways, paths and patios: a complete guide to design management and construction by Tony McCormack and it is available at this link.  Also a good web video reference is at this link which is a series of 12 videos on how to install Belgard pavers.  This link is interesting but I think there are some inaccuracies in the reference.

For the first step I planned the driveway by drawing it in Visio.  This is shown below:

Once it was drawn, the next step was to lay out the perimeter for excavation.  I did this by using stakes and string lines.

Excavating the driveway mainly means getting rid of the organic materials and digging deep enough so that the sub-base, base and pavers can be installed to the right height.  For my application 10" excavation was what I decided to do.  This is so that 6" of subbase, 1.5" of base and 60 mm (about 2-3/8")  of pavers could be placed on top of the sub-grade.  For code I only need about 4" of sub-base/base, but I talked to the inspector and he wanted 6" sub-base/base.  But then I read the book and it suggests 8" sub-base/base and that is what I went with.  To ensure my depth was not too deep and not to shallow I used string lines from the garage to the curb at the street and measured in several areas to verify the depth as I was excavating.

For the excavation I had a choice, use muscle or machine.  If I used a machine like a skid steer which I could rent from Home Depot (see link) for $450 a day I could have the job done easily in one day.

However,  I chose muscle because I viewed this as an opportunity to get in some very good exercise without the expense of a gym membership and at the same time not having to pay for the excavating equipment.  A pro would probably have gone for the machine, but I am desk jockey and it turns out sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day is one of the most unhealthy things to do.  According to Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative, “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.”  There is more about the side effects of sitting  at this link.

So I needed some exercise.  I also had gained some weight because my job gave us free unhealthy lunches and all the snacks we wanted in hopes we would work overtime and get the project done by the dead line.  So weighing in at 180 lbs on Christmas eve which is right at the point where a person my height is over weight I was not happy.  I decided to go on a diet at the same time that I was getting exercise from the excavation to turbocharge the effects on my health that this project would have.

The best diet I know of is the South Beach diet.  The diet has several books with recipes to follow when your on the diet.  They can be obtained used from Amazon.com at this link for a couple of bucks each.  This diet is a low carbohydrate diet with attention to the eating heart healthy by keeping the saturated fat content of the meals low.   Since my cholesterol is high, I kicked it up a notch and ate only vegetarian south beach meals.  I have found that I can lower my cholesterol by 50 points through diet.

The excavation took 21 hours which I spread out over 8 days which happened to be my christmas break.  Ya, that's how I spend my vacations because of the permits.  In addition to the 21 hours to break up the monotony I also did some landscaping, planting my home grown palm tree seedlings (see blog) and sprinkler repair (see this blog for how to work with sprinklers).  The end result of the driveway excavation is shown below.  In the picture some of the strings that were used for depth guides can be seen.

After having excavated the driveway, my muscles are strong as steel once again, its very easy to run a 5K and I've shed 7 pounds of weight.  Large weight loss like this is typical for the south beach diet for the first two weeks where phase 1 of 3 is followed.

For the next step I rented a vibratory compactor from Home Depot and ran it over the sub-grade.

 

After the compaction I laid the geotextile down.  The geotextile (see link) is a woven fabric (in my case 12.5' wide) which helps maintain separation of the sub-base and the sub-grade so that the integrity of the whole structure is maintained.  It helps improve the load bearing capacity of the driveway system and is porous to water.  It is optional but recommended by the two references I have provided for this blog.  Below is a picture of the installed geotextile weighed down so the wind will not take it away.

Well that's my update for now.  For the the next couple of weeks, I hope to accomplish adding the sub-base and then get the inspection.  See the sub-base installation in the next blog.

Until next time,  Next blog.

Happy Building.

The Dr.