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Beautiful Stone Driveway with Correct Water Management



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A&A gets a lot of calls from customers wanting to upgrade the appearance of the front of their home. Here is a driveway that is in serious need of attention. Taking and converting an asphalt driveway can add aesthetic beauty to the home while also in this case, preventing water from potentially compromising the foundation and leaking into the basement.

Here you can see that the asphalt driveway with many years of use and the weight of vehicles on it has taken it’s toll. This driveway has been compressed by the weight and slopes the driveway from the middle sending water right into the foundation of the house. If this is not remedied, the water can eventually get into the foundation, deteriorating the block work and potentially causing serious structural damage to the home.

The first step in getting the work underway starts with the demolition of the existing driveway. Where A&A gets a lot of calls and sees a lot of these types of jobs fail, is when the existing driveway material is not broken up and demolished and dug up deep enough to make a safe base that’s up to code.

Many people don’t realize the scope of the work needed to do this demolition. If the crew doesn’t take all the time needed to get the demolition done deep enough to put in a base that is up to code on the subgrade and granular sections of the base, the life of the driveway can be reduced significantly. And when we say reduced, we mean only lasting some years as opposed to decades. Several tons of debris need to be cleared away and gotten rid of in order to get down to the correct level of subgrade to build a proper base for a driveway that’s going to stand up to the weight of cars driving on it and last for decades. All this material needs to go somewhere, and with the use of bins and the proper equipment to get this job done, the material is taken off the property. The demolition needs to be done right so as to set up the ground for proper preparation.

The proper and correct preparation of the base with the use of only the best materials is a specialization of A&A. The grading of the driveway with the right base exactly perfectly done over an approximately 850 square foot surface must be very consistent for the surface water, to keep it away from the house and to go towards the center of the property which is the way it was intended by the engineers in the original neighborhood sub-dividing process. This is also very important to have an perfect driveway that doesn’t shift and stays exactly in place and looks beautiful for many years to come.

In doing this with the products that are available today, you can do a beautiful transformation aesthetically that will last for decades and decades but will also protect water from being slanted or directed towards the house. A&A’s top artisans work at laying down a tailored interlocking design with beautiful stone. Each stone is exactly laid to create a custom design specifically for the home that will fit the exact measurements of the driveway. The stone is put down and leveled, so that it is put in the correct place for when the bonding agent is applied. This way it perfectly manages surface water away from the home and won’t move and looks great for many many years to come.
While laying the stone on a perfect base, water management is always taken into account. Not only is the water directed from the side away from the house, but in some cases it has to go backwards to the back of the house, and in the middle it has to go toward the front of the house. This must be done with extreme precision and done is such a way as to prevent the interlocking from shifting or moving after several winters. This is the skill of A&A’s top crews that not only know the skill and aesthetics of laying down beautiful stone but also the water management that goes along with it.

Naturally, the home owner wanted to improve the aesthetic value of the home. Here with removing the asphalt and replacing it with beautiful man made and natural stone A&A totally accomplished an attractive tasteful transformation of the house. Further, with the driveway done, it was necessary to also address the steps and the foundation of the house. Re-doing the steps with concrete and stone as well as parging the foundation allows the look of the new driveway to blend in and look great with the rest of the home.

In this case A&A removed the precast steps, poured concrete, prepared it where the weight can withstand frost and heaving and applied a magnificent natural stone over the top of the steps and the porch. It was important to make sure the stone work sticks out and hangs over the foundation wall where the parging was also done. This again is water management to make sure water does not trickle down on the freshly parged foundation to cause it to wear away or get damaged. It causes the water to go down into the garden which is the way it’s supposed to.
Category
Management
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