What goes into replacing a typical driveway?

Here are the steps in a typical asphalt driveway replacement

The first step in replacing an asphalt driveway is removing the old driveway. Our crews will breakup and haul away the old material. You will see crews and front-end loaders breaking up the pavement and loading it into dump trucks, which haul it away where it can be recycled. Once the old material is gone we clean up the area to prepare for the next step – Grading.

“Grade” means the slope, incline, gradient, mainfall, pitch or rise (from Wikipedia). It’s basically the angle of the surface relative to the horizon. Zero grade means the surface is horizontal. What we are doing is preparing the angle of the surface to make sure it is proper, uniform, and consistent. It is a very important step because it’s the base upon which all other steps depend. Of course, our crews are excellent at it and this assures that each job gets off on the right foot.

The job may call for adding sub-base aggregate, or it may call for working with existing sub-base aggregate depending on specs. After grading we level and roll the aggregate in preparation for a nice layer of asphalt.

Now we can apply the first layer of asphalt called the “base” course. On top of the base course we add what we call the “wearing” course, which is the surface you actually contact when walking or driving. A typical install may have an average compacted thickness of 3″. That’s the total thickness of the base plus the wearing course after it’s been compacted by one of those big roller machines you may have seen.

Once it’s done you will have a beautiful, uniform, new asphalt surface that will serve you well for years to come, because you had it installed by Belson Asphalt!