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real estate resale value?

Peter has the right idea. I'd do 6" depth of 3/4" gravel topped by 2-3" of crusher run. Vibrate compact it and the crusher run will lock in the gravel...a nice smooth and quiet driveway with no rocks or pea gravel flying through the windows or taking paint dings out of your vehicles when you mow,
 
At one time in Indiana asphalt drives were not considered a permanent improvement and did not add to your property tax as a concrete drive did. When the state needed more money, that was changed and now both are taxed.
 
I'm not a realtor, but I did spend an awful lot of time looking at houses, appraisals, and talking with my realtor over the past year buying/selling my house. My $.02 from what I saw. Look at the comparible properties around to yours. If they all have paved driveways, then yes the lack of one is a major negative. If you're putting in a feature that isn't typical, it can help a little on average, but unless you find the right person it's not nearly worth the expense of putting it in.

It's kind of like everything else, updating something that's functional isn't usually worth the money, but fixing something broke is almost always worth it.
 
I'll echo the others...I don't know that a paved driveway would add to the resale value, but I'd think it would add to the curb appeal. Either concrete or asphalt will eventually need maintenance, but how much and how often will depend on the quality of the installation.

Art Mulder said:
... Make sure they do a good job on preparing the roadbed under it.
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That's important advice. The base is what makes or breaks a paving job. A lot of residential pavers do a poor job of base preparation. Blade it flat, roll the walk-behind compactor over it a time or two, and call it good. The job looks OK for a few years (maybe), but usually won't hold up over the long run. Just off the top of my head, I'd say a good contractor will spend 70% to 80% of the time on the job preparing the base, and the rest laying the surface. (Been a lot of years since I was on a paving job, so there's some margin of error in those numbers.)

Jim DeLaney said:
...I think the only way I'd be able to successfully pave mine (asphalt, BTW) would be to excavate about 1½~2 feet and backfill with decreasingly sized stone - like 2~4" goonies, then 1~2 crush, then 3/4" crush - before topping it with several inches of asphalt. All that seems very labor intensive, and also very expensive.

So, any advice or suggestions?
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As Chuck said, you're on the right track, but doing it right won't be cheap. I've seen the same sort of treatment done for roadways and concrete building foundations in sloppy clay conditions. Another possibility, depending on whether your local contractors can do it, would be soil cement. It's used as a subbase, but it would bridge the clay and provide a solid foundation for your asphalt or gravel. Keep in mind that the base needs to extend out from the roadbed at a 1:1 ratio, so for example if you have 2' of base, the width of the excavation for that base needs to be 4' wider than the paved surface. (The compression forces on pavement are just like on wood clamps, they fan out as they travel.) When we see a 10' wide driveway, a paving contractor sees a 14' wide trench. This adds to the cost of the base preparation.

To a large extent, the "best" solution will differ for everybody, depending on their soil conditions. A qualified soils engineer could probably recommend several option, but engineers are usually not in a driveway budget. That's where working with a local paving company with a good track record can pay off. They've built enough jobs that are designed by engineers that they know what works and what doesn't.
 
Vaughn McMillan;268429That's where working with a local paving company with a good track record can pay off. They've built enough jobs that [U said:
are[/U] designed by engineers that they know what works and what doesn't.
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That can be like finding the holy grail.:thumb::rofl::rofl:
 
Larry Edgerton said:
Sure Larry, feed the tax monkey:thumb:

The other Larry
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nope not gonna feed it Larry E..:) but i got to get fed too and the boss said that it needs to be fixed...so its bananas or meat and potatoes ..what would you chose:) i like teds idea of 6" of gravel then the 2 " of crushed rock will have someone give me a estimate on that and see how it shakes out.. another idea was some AB3 mix???
 
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Not sure what your situation is exactly, but at my exwifes house the drive was a half mile long and had a couple of sandy washes. At the end of a job I had a few bags of redimix left over so I dumped them in the washes and raked them in with a spring rake on the tractor. It firmed them up amazingly well, and I did not have very many bags. Lasted longer than I did.....:eek:
 
Here's another idea for you...in Virginia our highway department (VDOT) specs a standard mix of crusher run fines and gravel called VDOT 21a for road bases. Its great for driveways because...again, the fines lock in the larger pieces of gravel and help keep them from moving. Check what your state highway department uses and then look for a local stone supplier web site to see how much it costs. There's usually a calculator on the site that will help figure how much you need. Like this site:

http://www.yorktownmaterials.com/products_crushed_stone_sand_gravel.html
 
Paul Douglass said:
I'm not a expert, but Roundup is not what I use. You can spray with Roundup and can plant in the same place in a week. I use a soil sterlizer that I spray on once a year. It works great. Keep in mind that I live in a arid area so not quite as much growing going on. But I don't think Roundup is the correct application.
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Paul,
Does your soil sterilizer have a product name? I spray two or three times a summer trying to keep my driveway looking like a driveway instead of a lawn...
the weeds even sprout under the carport under the cars.
 
larry merlau said:
i already have stone and its a pain to plow over and the weeds grow threw it..:eek::eek:
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Ever see the old sections of Boston that were paved with cobble stone. Like riding on a roller coaster. :eek::eek::eek:

Asphalt is great. Easy to maintain. When I bought my house many years ago I reduced my offer by the cost of an asphalt driveway. The obviously accepted it.
 
larry merlau said:
nope not gonna feed it Larry E..:) but i got to get fed too and the boss said that it needs to be fixed...so its bananas or meat and potatoes ..what would you chose:) i like teds idea of 6" of gravel then the 2 " of crushed rock will have someone give me a estimate on that and see how it shakes out.. another idea was some AB3 mix???
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I think I had mentioned the AB3 to you, but I think I was more thinking of crusher run, which is what I've got on my drive. As I mentioned to you it's got to be graded properly or water will tend to sit on it longer, however I don't have weed problems. As you can see from the pic, there's quite a few fines in the mix and it compact pretty tightly.
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ok darren how did they put it in,, i got stones now that will need to go away i think.. because the wont lock in with your stuff right?? round will always be round right? and how thick is it? that would work if i can get it up here.. i asked a guy this am and he hadnt heard of it..
 
larry merlau said:
ok darren how did they put it in,, i got stones now that will need to go away i think.. because the wont lock in with your stuff right?? round will always be round right? and how thick is it? that would work if i can get it up here.. i asked a guy this am and he hadnt heard of it..
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I probably should have thrown down a quarter or something for comparison as the largest rocks there aren't much bigger. Mine is a limestone, not sure if you've got it around your area or not. If yours are smooth and round they may not interlock, but the fines should fill in gaps and the stuff is pretty hard once compacted, so may still work.
 
Darren Wright said:
...If yours are smooth and round they may not interlock, but the fines should fill in gaps and the stuff is pretty hard once compacted, so may still work.
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Darren nailed it. Round smooth gravel won't lock together like crushed stone. (That's why they crush it in the first place.) And the fines are important for filling and locking the gaps, too. You'd need to remove the round rock and replace it with crushed stone in order for the fines to really be effective.

Useless materials engineering factoids that you might not know: After stone is run through the crushing machine (the crusher), the results are sifted through a series of screens to separate the crushed pieces by size. Whatever falls through the smallest screen (I don't recall the size, but I think it's somewhere around 1/4" openings) is called the "fines". Unlike clay or silt, this fine material is not very sticky when it gets wet. Instead, the moisture helps lubricate the particles so they can settle in tightly with the surrounding material. In other words, the crushed gravel and fines should be installed wet (or moistened as it gets worked into place) and compacted well, preferably with a vibratory roller of some sort. Once it's in place, it tends to stay there unless it's not thick enough to bridge the mushy native soil below it. Here again, a good local contractor can likely tell you how thick is thick enough.
 
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