How to install your own paver driveway: part 5 resuming the paver driveway

In my last blog about the paver driveway, I had ordered the pavers but Lowes told me they would take 6 to 10 weeks to get them.  So in the mean time I stuccoed my whole house.  They did arrive in about 8 weeks.   However, I had about a month left of stuccoing to finish the stucco work.  So the pavers just sat on the lawn being neglected.

Im happy to say that 3 months later, I am resuming the paver driveway.  To get this point I mostly worked 6 to 8 hours on  weekends to stucco my house.  That's right I have been dialing it back on the work effort because I can see the end of the work is near and I am confident that I can finish.   In fact once the paver driveway is done the permit work is done.

Instead of going at it full bore, I took the time to have a little fun and learn some dances.   I first started out with a private instructor and learned the basics of salsa, rhumba and meremgue.   The reason why I took lessons was because, girls would sometimes ask me to dance but I never really wanted to mainly because I didn't know how.  When I got up the nerve to actually go out on the dance floor, I was stiff and awkward and danced like Frankenstein.  Believe me when a girl sees this and says loosen up it doesn't help and makes me want to go hide behind my beer at the table.  This is pretty much what every guy experiences and is why so few of them dance.  I decided to change that.

I have taken about 12 lessons and now and feel pretty comfortable and enjoy going to group dance lessons where the norm is to dance with and meet 5 to 10 girls.  Of course we are all just expecting to learn dance in these lessons.

Back to the driveway.  Right now its been all about prepping the driveway for the pavers.  It is very important to get the base material flat with a grade.  No depressions or mounds is the goal   To do this I used 1" diameter 10' long galvanized pipes to act as screed rails.  The pipes are stiff and help smooth out the voids when material is placed between hem and screed-ed.

      

For this go around I underestimated the amount of fill and ran short.   But it did reveal that I had an issue at the curb in the culdesca.  It turns out that the curb was not level especially at the storm drain where it took a dip.  When it rained it would usually puddle on the driveway at that location.

The only was yo fix it was to make my own curb that was level.  This turned out to be a 6 hour task or one weekend.  The curb I made is about 22' and is five inches wide and 8 inches deep and it is curved to match the culdesac.   It was a pretty fun task and took 9 bags of concrete.  So glad I bought that cement mixer it made the job much easier.

The first step was to build the forms.  To do this I cut some strips of quarter inch plywood I had laying around with the table saw and made some 1.5" x 1.5" stakes out of scrap wood.  It is so nice to have a scrap wood pile so that I did not have to spend money making these forms.  I then hammered the stakes in the ground five inches from the existing culdesac curb and made them vertical with a level.  Next, I tacked the quarter inch plywood on the stakes with a the nail gun and then shoveled some of the base up against the form so that it would be supported from the non fresh cement side.   The other side of the form was the cement curb that was already in place.  Its called a Miami curb.  The challenge here was it was not level.  I extended the curb taller by fastening wood to the curb with tap cons.  However I did not worry about this side being level because the other side of the form was level and I could screed off that.  Instead I just made the curb side of the form taller than it needed to be so it would hold the cement.

The forms are shown below:

Once the forms were place, I set up shop and made some concrete.  But I realized there was kind of problem of getting the cement into the forms from the cement mixer since they were so narrow.  After discussing this with my dad on the phone we came up with the idea of building a shoot.  This shown in the next picture.

With this setup, I mixed 9 bags of cement and filled the form.   As I was working my way down the curb.  One end became ready to finish off.  So I ran a edger down both sides and then took out the middle lines in the cement with a trowel.  The whole cement poor took 3 hours.   The cement I used was ready mix and it  just doesn't set up to fast.  The amount of water I used per 80 lb cement bag was 4 inches in a five gallon bucket.  This made the cement mix and pour well.

Once the curb was finished, I kept it wet for  a couple of days to strengthen it and then took off the forms.  I then finished the fill off by getting another load of fines and then compacted the entire driveway.  The end result is shown below.

 

The driveway is nice and flat now and compacted.   The next step is to put another 1" layer on using the skreed poles.  Put some guide lines down and then place the pavers.

See you in the next blog.

Happy Building,

The Dr.