Concrete Driveways

Michael Holigan: Now on this house that we're on right now, the steps come up to what's a pretty narrow patio area right here and we really don't want someone to step on there and then just take their first step, so we've actually widened it out and we're going to pour right over this with an aggregate stone, just like that we're going to have on the driveway. It's going to look really nice. Plus, we've widened it this way in case there's a number of people waiting for someone to answer the front door, they're not down the steps, and they're not just on this little platform.

Now when we pour this aggregate stone, this foundation wouldn't look quite right, so we're actually going to pour this stone and then build the aggregate up and make like a tiny curb around here to cover up the foundation itself and this piece of steel that this rock's setting on. Do you see that working in concrete is very similar to when we did the foundation several weeks ago on this series. The difference is, instead of a post-tension, we have a normal steel mesh and you can see he's pulling it up making sure that the concrete's going underneath it and on top of it so the steel's in the middle. That'll prevent the concrete from separating when it starts to crack. And you can also notice that the rock is much, much, smaller than what we had when we poured the foundation. That's because this is actually an exposed aggregate and we're going to wash the cement off of it later and you're actually going to see those little pebbles. It's really going to look sharp.

Over here we've gone ahead and poured the stairs, but we haven't built up our curb yet, and that's because the concrete's not hard enough right now. We need to let it stiffen up a little bit and then we'll pull it up there; form that little curb over the foundation.

This house is going to have a lawn sprinkler system, so we need to prepare for that before we pour all of our concrete. As you can see, they've installed the pipe sleeve. They're going to actually run their irrigation pipe inside of this one later. Plus, there's a secondary pipe you can see right here and that's for the electrical lines that are going to run to the valves. This whole system will be controlled automatically, so you're going to need to run wires, so you need two sleeves. So if you're having a house built and you're going to add a sprinkler system yourself, go ahead and have the builder add both sleeves before he pours all the driveway and all of your sidewalk. That way it makes it much easier when you put it in yourself.

Well as you can see, it's a week later and our exposed aggregate is now exposed. We've come back and washed the cement off the top of it to give it that rock look. We've also made our curb here to cover up the foundation. We wouldn't want this real pretty aggregate and then see just normal concrete and then the rock on our house. And, to do the curb, the builder really shouldn't you any extra. For the exposed aggregate, you can expect to pay about a dollar a square foot extra for the labor and the material. Now, as you remember, our foundation ended right here, so we would've just had a little bitty porch. We've gone ahead and extended that out and moved our step out to give everybody more room if you have a lot of guests coming up to your front door. Now, if you look at it, you can see that the curb is a lot taller right here than it is back here. Now the foundation's all one level. The reason it gets taller is the patio is actually going down hill. It's sloping away. We don't want any water getting trapped up against the front door or going into the house.

Let's take a moment to talk about the landscaping we've added in the last week. Now there's a lot of experts who know a lot more about landscaping than I do, but I'm going to show you a few things to watch for your house that protects the foundation, and that's to keep water from being trapped up against the house. Now the landscaping slopes away from the house, just like the patio, and we don't want any water to set here, because it may go down to a hard layer of clay or maybe rock and come back up underneath the foundation. Now that would weaken the soil below the foundation and that might let it shift or crack, so we always need to keep water flowing away from the house. We also need to keep our shrubs at least 18 inches away from the house to prevent 'em from trapping any water between the foundation and the shrub itself. Now back here you may see a drain pipe and you think, "Well that's to drain the flower beds.". Well, it's not, because our flower beds are sloped away; we don't need a drain for that. What that drain is for is the gutters that we're going to add to this house. The roof will trap a lot of water. It's has to go somewhere, so we bring the gutters down here, we'll put 'em into the drain, if we had a splash block; all that extra water on a heavy rain will maybe wash down our landscaping, we don't want that. It'll go in the drain right there and it comes out of our landscaping right here onto the driveway. And we want to keep the driveway sloping away from the house for the same reason, especially by the garage. We don't want to wash a car or have a heavy rain and have water go back up into the house. So remember, everything needs to slope away from the house.

Episode 023 1995 - 96 Season

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