DIY Project: Using Loose Materials to Pave a Low-budget New Driveway
Paving or reconstructing new driveways will surely cost you a lot of money. Hiring the workers and buying the materialsare going to exhaust your wallet and your mind. However, it does not mean that you cannot have those dream pathways anyway.
To minimize the budget you will spend on building new driveways, you might want to start a DIY (do-it-yourself) project with your family members. Doing a DIY project will cut down on the finances you have planned on hiring the workers. If you want to cut down on the budget more, you might want to use loose materials as the substance of your new driveways.Loose materials as gravel, stone, and macadam(or tar-and-chip) are the perfect materials for constructing low-budget driveways.
Driveway
- Gravel Driveways
The cost of a gravel driveway is around $1 to $3 per square foot. You can lower the cost down by spreading the gravel over the driveways by yourself. That fact named gravel as the least expensive material for driveways. The more plus point of it is that gravel is long lasting and easy to maintain.
The gravel for driveways nowadays is not purely gravel but often a processed product consisted of rock, sand, and clay. The composition make gravel a stable surface for driveways.
What you need to do in constructing a gravel driveway is digging the ground deep enough to put the gravel in. if you want to make the gravel stay in place longer, you might want to delineate your driveways with bricks.
- Stone Driveways
Just like gravel, stone does not cost an arm and leg. It only cost around $1 to $4 per square foot, make it the second least expensive material for driveways. Again, you can minimize the cost by doing the work yourself.
Similar to the construction of gravel driveways, stones driveways are made by pouring the stones into a deep enough dug ground. Then, you can use a metal rake to smooth and grade the surface.
- Macadam Driveways
Macadam driveway or often referred as tar-and-chip driveway is made by spraying the driveway base with hot liquid asphalt, coating it with small stones or gravels (macadam), then compacting the stones or rolling it over to make a hard and permanent surface. You can layer it again with another coating of tar to make it last longer.
Macadam driveways is in fact not as cheap as the previous two. It cost in the range $2 to $5 per square foot. It will cost more if you add another layer of tar on top of it. Moreover, you cannot cut down the cost by doing the project entirely by yourself because the work is mostly done by the professionals. However, you may cut down the cost in hiring labors as you include yourself as a worker for the project.
For the maintenance, you need to check your macadam driveways regularly in 6-7 years after made. If you find that the layer has been torn off, you might need to add another layer of macadam and tar on it.
Contact us
 Phone Call |
 Text Message |
 |
