For the sub-base I chose road base or 1.5" crushed concrete. Code requires 4 inches of crushed concrete (3/8" ?) or similar material for the sub-base and paver base combined. But when I talked to the inspector he wanted 6". But the book driveways, paths and patios by Tony McCormack implied that 6" of sub-base and an additional 1 to 2 inches of paver base materiel / bedding on top. Anyway since I excavated 10" I put in 6" of sub-base leaving 4" for the paver base / bedding and the pavers (pavers are 2 and 3/8" thick).
The crushed concrete costs about $16 a ton which is about 1.3 yards and I ordered 17 yards. I ended up paying $370 for the entire load. I saved money because I shopped around. Landscape depot offers crushed concrete for $60 a yard plus the delivery charge of $50 dollars which would have been $1070. Got to watch your prices! Even so I like Landscape Depot because there are some neat varieties of stone and rock there and I might one day buy something there.
On a Friday I received delivery of the sub-base shown below.
The driver of the dump truck was kind to me. Because there was a 10" ledge he could not dump the sub-base into the middle of the driveway in fact a majority of it would have ended up in the street except he had a trick. First he dumped some of the load at the driveway edge and then he backed is truck up on it and dumped the rest. This in effect distributed the crushed concrete on about half the driveway. Quite the time saver! Below is picture of the sub-base from the other side where you can see the dump truck tire marks.
After he dumped the crushed concrete, I socialized with him because he had brought me some fill before for the concrete pads I had installed (see this blog). He said I had done a lot of work on the house. Anyway, after some chit chat I picked his brain on paver installation. He actually knew quite alot. He recommend to spread the sub-base with a concrete kumalong or concrete placer and a wide landscape rake. These are shown below.
By the way when you buy tools remember that Kobalt (Lowe's brand) or
Husky (Home depot's brand) have lifetime warranties. I have gotten
several tape measures and even a wheel barrow for free when the ones I
originally bought broke. Lowe's has the 5% discount every time you use
their credit card so Lowe's usually wins out with me.
The next step was distributing the 20 toms of material. In doing this I had to be accurate with my distribution because if I under filled a spot I would have to roll the wheel barrow over the crushed concrete which is soft and that is difficult. So right up front I figured a way to get a proper amount of material on the geotextile covered driveway surface. What I did is use a depth guide. I made this out of a concrete block and two weights on top which is about 6" high. This is shown in the picture below.
This method worked out really well and the only reason it did so good was because I was very accurate with the excavation. Sometimes starting off a project right and with quality work can save you a lot of time an effort later on.
Once all the crushed concrete was distributed I did the final grading. Instead of putting stakes and string lines in and measure down from the string lines like I did for the excavation, I used a laser level which I placed on the garage floor and angled down towards the curb at the entrance so that the laser beam matched the grade of the driveway. I did this technique on the left, right and middle of the driveway. I used the tape measure and measured down from the laser beam and made the adjustments to the fill. The depth guides had got it pretty close.
All the adjustments that involved the laser level were made with the concrete placer. With this device I was able to get the driveway to the correct height to within plus or minus a quarter of an inch. After that I went over the entire driveway with the Landscape rake and the final result is shown below.
The distributing of the sub-base material took 8 hours. It was a tough eight hours. Luckily the weather was cool. My collar bone ended up hurting and my neck and back ached. However, it was a great work out and it made me feel a little more in shape.
The next step is to tamp the sub-base. It is recommended to tamp the sub-base for every three or four inches of sub-base thickness but I decided to tamp it after the entire 6 inches was placed. I hope that is ok. I intend to rent the vibratory compactor from home depot again. I hope to do that next weekend and also get the inspection. In the next blog I will discuss paver selection.
That's all for now,
Happy Building,
The Dr.
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