Can a long gravel driveway be turned into concrete?

Can a long gravel driveway be turned into concrete?

Yes. A gravel drive gets turned into concrete the same way any slab goes in, on graded ground and a compacted base, with forms set to a string line. On a county lot the decision is length. Most long lanes get concrete on the stretches that fail, and the gravel keeps the rest. Each stretch is built and priced like a new concrete driveway in Henderson County.

In town a driveway runs from the street to the garage and that is the whole job. Out along the Corydon and Sebree roads it can be a lane that runs past the house and on back to a shop, and paving every foot of it is a different budget from paving the part that gives trouble. Plenty of owners start with one section and add another a few seasons later. That works when the first pour is planned with the next one in mind.

Where should the paving start on a long gravel drive?

At the two ends, usually. The house end is where every trip starts and finishes, and the road end is where the lane meets the blacktop and washes out. After those come the pad at a shop door and any stretch that turns soft every spring. The long middle of the lane is often the last part that needs concrete, and some never do.

• The parking and turning area at the house. Tires twist the gravel out of place every time a car swings in, and the stones end up tracked onto the porch and the kitchen floor.
• The mouth at the road. Each car that pulls out spins a little gravel onto the blacktop, and a hard rain carries off more of what is left.
• The strip in front of a shop or barn door, where the tractor turns and the mud piles up. How far that pad runs out from the door is covered under the strip outside the barn door.
• The low stretch that ruts every March. On bottomland that holds water into spring, a section of the lane sinks under every load, the same ground that raises the fill question on a pole barn floor in the county.

Whatever stretch gets paved is priced by the square foot, $8 - $12 per sq ft installed, so a section can be measured and quoted on its own. Tell us which parts of the lane give you trouble and how far apart they are, and the site visit sorts out what goes in now and what can wait.

Can the old gravel become the base for the concrete?

Sometimes, and only after somebody digs into it. Years of tires pack a gravel drive hard, and on the high, dry stretches that packed stone can be regraded, topped up and compacted into a good base. In the ruts and the low spots the gravel is usually mixed down into the clay, and that has to come out.

What looks like a solid drive from the top can be a few inches of stone over mud. Every load of gravel ever spread on the lane gets pushed down into whatever is soft, so the layer is thick where the ground is firm and thin to nothing where it is not. A shovel and a probe on the site visit show which is which, stretch by stretch, before anyone writes a number.

So the quote may read as a mix, with the existing stone regraded and compacted on one stretch and stripped out and rebuilt on another. Nobody can promise the old gravel will do until it has been dug. What the base has to do is in why the base under a driveway matters as much as the slab, and the rest of what goes into a new driveway here is on the driveway page.

What happens where the concrete stops and the gravel keeps going?

The end of the slab is where these jobs fail. Tires roll off the concrete onto loose gravel, the gravel at the edge gets pushed away, and within a season there is a rut and a drop at the end of the pour. Both sides of the line need work, a thickened edge on the slab and gravel built up level with it and kept there.

Start with the concrete side. A slab end with gravel on one side has the same weakness as any open edge, solid support behind it and loose stone in front. Every wheel that drops off it hammers that last foot. The reasons an unsupported edge snaps are in why a driveway edge breaks off, and the end of a part-paved lane takes that load on every trip. So the end gets formed deeper than the rest of the slab and run square across the lane. An angled or curved end leaves a thin point for a tire to catch.

Then the gravel side. The stone right at the end of the slab has to be the firmest gravel on the property, compacted in layers and brought up level with the top of the concrete. Every car hits the same spot coming off the slab, so a drop of even an inch is a pothole by spring. That strip of gravel is not done when the crew leaves. It settles, it gets kicked out, and someone needs to rake stone back into it a few times a year and top it up after a wet spell.

Gravel on the concrete is the other half of the problem. Tires carry stone up onto the slab from the gravel side, and loose stone on concrete rolls underfoot and grinds into the broom finish. A run of concrete between the end of the gravel and the place cars park gives the tires room to shed it before the parking area.

Pick the spot for the end with care. Firm, level ground keeps the transition out of the soft places. Stopping the slab at the bottom of a dip or in the middle of a low stretch puts the weakest point of the job on the worst ground on the lane.

Winter brings the blade. Whoever clears the lane with a tractor blade is scraping stone most of the way and concrete for the last stretch, and the steel edge finds any lip the settled gravel has left at the end of the slab. Keeping that transition level is what protects it, and whoever runs the blade should know where the slab begins.

Does the drive need a turnaround so nobody backs onto the road?

On a county road, usually yes. Backing a car out of a long lane onto a highway is the reason a turnaround pad or a wider parking area at the house gets poured, and backing a pickup with a trailer down a lane and out onto the road is worse. A pad to one side lets everything leave nose first.

Size it to what actually turns there. A car needs less room than a pickup pulling a boat, and a pickup with a trailer needs less than a tractor with an implement on the back. The common shapes are a pad off one side of the drive near the house that a car backs into and then pulls out of forward, or the parking area itself poured wide enough to swing around in. Where the lane passes a shop, the barn approach can do double duty as the turnaround if it is laid out for it.

A pad that a tractor, a grain truck or a gravel delivery crosses is built heavier than one that only sees cars, and when a farm-edge load calls for a heavier slab is on the thickness answer.

What about the pipe under the drive at the road ditch?

Many county drives cross the roadside ditch on a pipe, and concrete poured over it depends on it. The pipe has to be sound and covered before anything gets formed near the road. A pipe that is crushed or silted shut backs the ditch water up, and the mouth of the drive turns into a pond.

The crew looks at the pipe before setting forms at the road end, at both openings and at the ground over it. Who owns the ditch and who has a say over the pipe and the shoulder is a question asked at the start, before the mouth of the drive is planned, and the answer can change where the concrete stops.