When our crew looks at a worn-out driveway, we are really looking at what happened underneath it. A drive that has dropped near the garage almost always sat on soft fill that kept settling. A long crack down the center usually means the slab was too thin or the joints were too far apart. A pitted, flaking surface often traces back to concrete that dried too fast or was never cured properly before salt went down. Each of those problems has a fix, and we build all of them into a new driveway. We jackhammer the failed drive and truck the chunks away. Then the excavator digs past the mushy fill, and fresh limestone goes in, tamped lift by lift until a loaded truck would not dent it. Steel rides on plastic chairs so it lands mid-slab. A Summit driveway from our crew runs deeper than any footpath or backyard patio, usually somewhere between 5 and 6 inches depending on soil and the vehicles you own, and it gets extra depth at the street, where tires and snowplows hit hardest. We slope the top so melting snow runs off, drag a broom across it for grip, and cut joints on a planned grid. Then it sits under curing blankets before the first car rolls on, which gives it the strength to stand up to salt.
