---
title: 'How to Replace Your Entire Driveway (Complete Tear Out and Repave)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=LXFANVqjbt0'
video_id: 'LXFANVqjbt0'
date: 2026-08-05
duration_sec: 913
---

# How to Replace Your Entire Driveway (Complete Tear Out and Repave)

> Source: [How to Replace Your Entire Driveway (Complete Tear Out and Repave)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=LXFANVqjbt0)

## Summary

ChrisFix documents the complete process of replacing his crumbling driveway, from tearing out the old asphalt to paving a new one. He covers the machinery used, the importance of a proper sub-base, and the final cost breakdown.

### Key Points

- **Why Replace the Driveway** [00:00] — ChrisFix's driveway is his 'office' where he films car repair videos. It's crumbling, unsafe for jack stands, and has a problematic lip at the garage entrance.
- **Tearing Out Old Asphalt** [01:53] — A skid steer with a tooth bucket is used to pry up the old asphalt. The old driveway was only 1 inch thick in places, a shortcut that led to cracking and failure.
- **Recycling the Old Asphalt** [03:41] — About 25 tons (22,000 kg) of old asphalt is hauled to a plant where it's recycled into millings for new driveways.
- **Marking Straight Edges** [03:57] — The team uses a rope with chalk to imprint straight lines along the driveway edges, then cuts along them with a mattock or shovel.
- **Leveling with QP Stone** [04:39] — Quarry processed (QP) stone is spread to level the sub-base. Typically 4-6 inches is recommended, but only 1-2 inches is needed here because the existing sub-base is dense.
- **Using the Paver to Level Stone** [05:32] — The asphalt paver is backed over the stone to level it extra flat and compress it, a trick that works well because the paver will lay the asphalt next.
- **Fixing a Concrete Slab Issue** [06:13] — A concrete slab near the garage was too high. They cut it with a diamond-blade saw and removed the excess to ensure proper drainage away from the garage.
- **Compacting the Sub-base** [07:13] — A tandem roller compacts the stone and dirt. Water is sprayed to help compaction, and the roller's vibration shakes particles closer together.
- **Laying Hot Asphalt** [08:19] — The paver lays I-5 hot asphalt mix at about 300°F (150°C). The driveway requires two passes. Workers manually spread asphalt near the garage for proper grade.
- **Final Rolling and Compaction** [10:18] — Tandem rollers and a plate compactor smooth and compress the hot asphalt. Water is used to prevent sticking and the steam helps iron out imperfections.
- **Cost Breakdown** [11:31] — The entire job cost $6,000, which is $5.45 per square foot. This includes tear-out, hauling, QP stone base, grading, compacting, and 3.5 inches of commercial-grade asphalt.
- **Aftercare and Results** [12:23] — The new driveway is smooth and functional. It takes 6-12 months to fully cure. Avoid driving on it for at least a week, and use wood under jack stands to prevent imprints.

### Conclusion

Replacing a driveway is a major project, but with the right equipment and process, it can be done efficiently. The new driveway is not only aesthetically pleasing but also safe and functional for ChrisFix's work.

## Transcript

Hey guys ChrisFix here and today I'm going to&nbsp; show you how to dig up your entire driveway&nbsp;&nbsp; and redo it to make it look amazing! Now I&nbsp; thought this would be an interesting video,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's not what I normally do, but the driveway is&nbsp; a pretty important place for me because this is&nbsp;&nbsp;
where I do all my work, this is where I make all&nbsp; the videos to teach you guys how to fix your car,&nbsp;&nbsp; and this is basically like my office and&nbsp; it's seen better days look at this...&nbsp; This is all just crumbling apart and it's&nbsp; just not good... It's not safe to work&nbsp;&nbsp;
on anymore and it's difficult to work on. Even something as simple as the transition&nbsp;&nbsp; disrepair along the whole length of the garage. When I move the toolbox in and out of the garage,&nbsp;&nbsp;
the driveway meets the garage. And this toolbox is very heavy&nbsp;&nbsp; so getting it over this ledge is difficult, so&nbsp; fixing this is going to be a big deal for me!&nbsp; Another major problem with the driveway&nbsp; is when I go to use jack stands.&nbsp;
You can see how the unleveled driveway&nbsp; causes the jack stand to wobble which&nbsp;&nbsp; seen better days it just constantly&nbsp; keeps lifting up and it's not good,&nbsp; it needs to get redone, there's no&nbsp; doubt in my mind, and it's hard because&nbsp;
like I said this is my office this is where&nbsp; I work and this is where I make my videos.&nbsp; So how do I redo a driveway and&nbsp; not work on it for a couple days?&nbsp; Well I figured let me show you the entire process. Now unfortunately a driveway this bad cannot be&nbsp;&nbsp;
easily repaired with common hand tools like we're&nbsp; used to we're gonna have to bring out the heavy&nbsp;&nbsp; machinery but don't worry I'm going to show you&nbsp; the entire process from start to finish including:&nbsp; Grading and leveling it... Bringing a compactor in...&nbsp;
And then putting down the new asphalt&nbsp; driveway so we could get amazing results.&nbsp; So let's take one last look at this&nbsp; old tired driveway. She's treated&nbsp;&nbsp; us well with 10 years of repair videos&nbsp; that garnered over 1.5 billion views,&nbsp;
So let's fix this driveway up! Okay so first we need to dig&nbsp;&nbsp; and to do that we're using a&nbsp; skid steer with a tooth bucket.&nbsp;
The team starts at the beginning of the driveway&nbsp; over by the sidewalk and the goal is to pry up&nbsp;&nbsp; the asphalt without damaging the sidewall. You also don't want to dig into the ground&nbsp;&nbsp; too deep which could loosen up that&nbsp; dirt and rock underneath the driveway.&nbsp;
We want that dirt and rock to be as hard as&nbsp; possible, this is known as the sub-base and&nbsp;&nbsp; it's nice and hard and compacted after 30&nbsp; years of this driveway being on top of it,&nbsp; that layer of asphalt, the rest of the driveway&nbsp; peels up pretty easily. I mean just watch this...&nbsp;
Check out how the asphalt just comes&nbsp; right up and goes right into the bucket.&nbsp; And now once that bucket is filled, the skid&nbsp; steer dumps the old pieces of driveway into&nbsp;&nbsp; the dump truck and the process repeats. Now if you look closely you can see my&nbsp;&nbsp;
the contractor took a shortcut and put down&nbsp; only one inch of asphalt to try to save money.&nbsp; A driveway should at least be two&nbsp; inches thick, but since it was so thin,&nbsp;&nbsp; the driveway started to crack, and the&nbsp; owner of the house at the time complained.&nbsp;
And instead of digging up the driveway and&nbsp; repairing it properly, all they did was put&nbsp;&nbsp; down another layer of asphalt right on top&nbsp; of it which ultimately caused this to fail.&nbsp; garage doors and the concrete slab. You can see the spotter helping the&nbsp;&nbsp;
worker in the skid steer break up that&nbsp; last piece of asphalt next to the garage,&nbsp;&nbsp; and now that that's broken up, the team could&nbsp; get in there and manually pick up the last few&nbsp;&nbsp; pieces of asphalt and throw it into the bucket. That way there's no risk at damaging the garage.&nbsp;
And that includes this last&nbsp; giant piece of asphalt!&nbsp; Now with the driveway completely cleared&nbsp; out, the last of the asphalt is dumped&nbsp;&nbsp; into the dump truck and now there's about&nbsp; 25 tons (22,000kg) of asphalt in this truck&nbsp;&nbsp;
and this will be taken to the asphalt plant&nbsp; where they cut it up into little one-inch&nbsp;&nbsp; pieces called millings and then that'll&nbsp; be recycled and used in new driveways. the next thing to do is make sure&nbsp; the new driveway will be straight.&nbsp;
the other. Then they walk down the&nbsp; rope and mark the edge with paint .&nbsp; Once one side's done the process is repeated&nbsp; on the other side of the driveway as well.&nbsp; Now with these lines put down, a tool called a&nbsp; mattock is used to cut a straight edge along the&nbsp;&nbsp;
another method of getting that straight&nbsp; line is to use just a basic shovel and&nbsp;&nbsp; work your way down the line to create a nice&nbsp; and straight edge. (more dirt digging noises)
Okay so the edges are straight and all the old&nbsp; asphalt is removed so we're down to this bare&nbsp;&nbsp; dirt, and the old driveway really compacted&nbsp; this dirt so it's very hard and that's good.&nbsp; This is a great sub base for the new driveway to&nbsp; go over, but the problem is, it's not level...&nbsp;
So the solution is to use quarry processed stone,&nbsp; also known as QP stone, to level this sub base.&nbsp; You're gonna want 4-6in (10cm-15cm)&nbsp; of this quarry process stone put down.&nbsp;
But since we have a nice dense sub-base,&nbsp; they're only adding an inch or two of stone,&nbsp;&nbsp; to grade and level the surface, that way&nbsp; the new driveway won't have any sinkholes,&nbsp;&nbsp; and it'll slope slightly towards the&nbsp; street to allow the rain to run off.&nbsp;
So the skid steer driver is putting down&nbsp; about one to two inches of QP stone as&nbsp;&nbsp; evenly as possible over the entire driveway. And once the stone covers the whole driveway,&nbsp;&nbsp; you can see he's using the bucket to&nbsp; level out any high or low spots, like so.
Finally the team uses rakes to&nbsp; manually level out the driveway,&nbsp; Now these guys are doing great work&nbsp; and getting the driveway pretty level,&nbsp;&nbsp; but the owner of the company said he has a trick&nbsp; up his sleeve to get this driveway extra level...
And that trick is to get the asphalt&nbsp; paver, back it all the way up the driveway,&nbsp; You can see the screed which is that flat piece&nbsp; of metal at the back of the paver, leveling out&nbsp;&nbsp;
the extra gravel on the surface. And using the&nbsp; paver for this actually makes a lot of sense&nbsp;&nbsp; because this is what's going to be laying down&nbsp; and leveling out the asphalt in the next step...&nbsp; And not only are they making it extra level but&nbsp; the weight of the paver compresses the stone,&nbsp;&nbsp;
and you can really see how well this&nbsp; trick works to flatten out that stone. Now while they were leveling the&nbsp; driveway, I noticed the concrete&nbsp;&nbsp; Luckily I caught it and this is&nbsp; a pretty easy fix at this stage.&nbsp;
And to do that they're using a rope with some&nbsp; chalk on it to imprint the line onto the concrete. Next they use a gas powered concrete saw&nbsp; with a diamond blade to follow that line,&nbsp;&nbsp; anytime you cut concrete it creates a lot of dust.
So the trick to keep the dust down is&nbsp; to spray the area with water as you cut. the concrete pieces could be removed&nbsp; and then they're just going to fill&nbsp;&nbsp; this area in with stone and compact it and&nbsp; level it with the rest of the driveway.
this would have been a lot more difficult to fix. So now the guys are finishing off leveling&nbsp; the rest of the driveway with the paver,&nbsp; But first the team took a quick lunch&nbsp; break and apparently one of the guys&nbsp;&nbsp;
I thought that was pretty cool! (ChrisFix noises) compact the sub-base even more,&nbsp; so we won't have any sinkholes. with water is because dry stone and&nbsp; dirt doesn't compact very well...
But if you use wet sand, it holds together,&nbsp; so the same principle applies here. 4,000 pounds (1800kg) as much as a large car, and all this weight is pushing on the ground&nbsp;&nbsp;
through these two rollers which really&nbsp; compresses the stone and dirt together. And if you listen not only is it rolling&nbsp; over the stone with all the weight,&nbsp;&nbsp; but it also has a vibration feature, and&nbsp; those vibrations shake the particles of&nbsp;&nbsp;
dust and dirt and stone together, so they fit&nbsp; closer, and you could compact it even more.&nbsp; So the tandem roller is worked up&nbsp; and down the driveway multiple times,&nbsp;&nbsp;
overlapping its path to make sure&nbsp; the entire sub base is rock solid.&nbsp; And once they're done with this, we are ready&nbsp; for the final step: laying down the asphalt! Now something I noticed that I was pretty&nbsp; impressed by was after each step these guys clean&nbsp;&nbsp;
their machines immediately, which is how they&nbsp; look so good even though they're used every day. Alright and for the last main step, the asphalt&nbsp; paver is brought onto the driveway to warm up. driveway is wide enough where there&nbsp; has to be two passes with the paver,&nbsp;&nbsp;
truck is back from the asphalt plant&nbsp; with 25 tons of I-5 hot asphalt mix,&nbsp; With the conveyor on, some of the&nbsp; hot mix asphalt is dumped into the&nbsp;&nbsp;
paver and if you can't tell this is&nbsp; very very hot around 300°F (150°C). So with a full load, the paver is backed up&nbsp; as close as it could get to the garage door,&nbsp; and they dump a bunch of hot asphalt&nbsp; for the workers to manually spread.&nbsp;
they spread it by hand, and they check&nbsp; the asphalt to make sure that there's&nbsp;&nbsp; house so rainwater runs down the&nbsp; driveway and not into the garage.
Now with the correct grade and thickness,&nbsp; the paper backs up on onto the fresh asphalt. And finally the screed is lowered which pushes&nbsp; down the fresh asphalt to compress and level it.&nbsp;
Now the asphalt starts pouring out, and you&nbsp; can see the extensions keeping the asphalt&nbsp;&nbsp; off the grass giving it a nice straight&nbsp; edge as the paver moves down the driveway.&nbsp; And while you can see the asphalt comes out&nbsp; as a bunch of small pieces in the front,&nbsp;
if we go over to the back, the asphalt gets&nbsp; leveled and slightly compressed by the screed,&nbsp; and that creates a nice smooth&nbsp; level driveway. I mean just take&nbsp;&nbsp; Finally at the end of the driveway,&nbsp; the last bit of hot mix is poured out,&nbsp;&nbsp;
there and level and grade where&nbsp; the driveway meets the sidewalk. the rain water could run off into the street&nbsp; and not puddle on the end of the driveway.
With half the driveway laid down,&nbsp; now it's time to do the other half. and the paver makes quick work at laying&nbsp; the other side of the driveway down. You can see the extension overlap&nbsp; slightly on the part that was just paved,&nbsp;&nbsp;
and what that does is adjust the&nbsp; thickness of the asphalt going down. thickness on both the right&nbsp; and left side of the driveway.
All right, so with the entire driveway&nbsp; paved, now the tandem rollers used one&nbsp;&nbsp; last time to compress the hot asphalt to&nbsp; make it as smooth and dense as possible. And just watch it have a tandem roller compresses&nbsp; and Smooths out this rough asphalt at the surface&nbsp;&nbsp;
it's just so satisfying seeing that rough&nbsp; surface get turned into a nice smooth driveway. And finally with one last pass the driveway is&nbsp; completely smooth now as the roller continues&nbsp;&nbsp;
to go up and down the driveway to compress it&nbsp; even more it can't get to every single spot like&nbsp;&nbsp; right here next to the garage so a smaller plate&nbsp; compactor is used to get into these areas that&nbsp;&nbsp; the roller can't then once the roller is done for&nbsp; the final step the plate compactor makes its way&nbsp;&nbsp;
around the driveway touching every square inch to&nbsp; smooth out the finish and if you're wondering the&nbsp;&nbsp; reason why they use water is to prevent the hot&nbsp; asphalt from sticking to the Machinery but it's&nbsp;&nbsp; also used to help smooth out the Finish because&nbsp; water turns to steam when it hits that hot asphalt&nbsp;&nbsp;
and that steam helps iron out the imperfections&nbsp; in the driveway and it makes it look a lot more&nbsp;&nbsp; uniform and smooth so with one last pass with the&nbsp; plate compactor and our driveway is officially&nbsp;&nbsp; done now this took a little over four hours&nbsp; to complete and I think the results speak for&nbsp;&nbsp;
themselves these guys did an amazing job all right&nbsp; now that the guys are heading out let me show you&nbsp;&nbsp; the breakdown of how much this cost foreign so&nbsp; for digging up that old driveway and Hauling&nbsp;&nbsp;
that asphalt away putting down the QP Stone base&nbsp; and then grading and leveling and compacting that&nbsp;&nbsp; stone base and finally adding three and a half&nbsp; inches of commercial grade I5 hot asphalt and&nbsp;&nbsp;
then rolling that all of this cost me six thousand&nbsp; dollars and so you have an idea that came out to&nbsp;&nbsp; $5.45 a square foot so now you could do the math&nbsp; to get a rough estimate to give you an idea of&nbsp;&nbsp;
how much it would cost to get your driveway redone&nbsp; all right and check out the driveway this looks so&nbsp;&nbsp; good man I should have done this a long time ago&nbsp; it's just hard because I always have to have cars&nbsp;&nbsp; on here I always have to make videos and I have&nbsp; to keep working to keep going with YouTube so but&nbsp;&nbsp;
I got a nice little spot here that I was able to&nbsp; do it and man it came out awesome holy smokes you&nbsp;&nbsp; could actually feel the heat radiating off this&nbsp; thing well I know this is going to be really cool&nbsp;&nbsp; check this out so this is my thermal camera and&nbsp; the purple color is about 140°F (60°C) and the&nbsp;&nbsp;
yellow is about 180°F (82°C). you can see the side&nbsp; closer to us is cooler because that's what they&nbsp;&nbsp; laid down first first compared to the other side&nbsp; which is still pretty hot now it's important that&nbsp;&nbsp; you don't walk on this until it cools down which&nbsp; takes about a day or two and they told me to keep&nbsp;&nbsp;
the cars off of this for at least a week that&nbsp; way the asphalt has time to cure and Harden so&nbsp;&nbsp; there you go out with the old and in with the new&nbsp; and I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger and got&nbsp;&nbsp; this done because look at the difference here's&nbsp; a before and after we used to have giant potholes&nbsp;&nbsp;
like this and now it's nice and smooth the edge&nbsp; of the driveway was crumbling into pieces and&nbsp;&nbsp; now it's straight and solid so I know they said&nbsp; I had to wait a week before driving on it but I&nbsp;&nbsp; wanted to keep the cars off as long as I could&nbsp; so here we are two weeks later and I'm able to&nbsp;&nbsp;
Park part of my fleet on this beautiful driveway&nbsp; and not only does this driveway look absolutely&nbsp;&nbsp; amazing but it's completely functional it's nice&nbsp; and flat there's no more bumps and over here&nbsp;&nbsp; where I had that issue where the old driveway sunk&nbsp; down and created that giant lip look nice and flat&nbsp;&nbsp;
now so I could get my toolbox in and out of the&nbsp; garage without having to lift it up nice and easy&nbsp;&nbsp; also if you remember with the old driveway the&nbsp; jack stand was wobbly and moved around which was&nbsp;&nbsp;
very dangerous well now check it out it doesn't&nbsp; wobble at all no matter which direction you put&nbsp;&nbsp; it it is nice and sturdy now these jack stands&nbsp; have very sharp edges here and if you put the&nbsp;&nbsp;
weight of the vehicle on here it will dig into&nbsp; this driveway this driveway does take about six&nbsp;&nbsp; to 12 months to fully Harden and cure it's fine&nbsp; for cars but not good for jack stands so an easy&nbsp;&nbsp; solution is just use a piece of wood underneath&nbsp; the jack stands and now it won't imprint onto the&nbsp;&nbsp;
driveway because we have a nice large surface&nbsp; area that we distributed the load over and one&nbsp;&nbsp; messed up due to oil stains and that's pretty&nbsp; simple with these oil mats they work really well&nbsp;&nbsp;
the top of the mat here is an absorbent material&nbsp; and the bottom of the mat is a plastic material&nbsp;&nbsp; so it won't absorb through and then get on the&nbsp; driveway so I'll link it in the description if&nbsp;&nbsp; that I thought about I just put this brand new&nbsp; beautiful driveway I don't want to mess it up&nbsp;&nbsp;
and get stains on it so that's how I'm going to&nbsp; prevent any oil stains so that's the process on&nbsp;&nbsp; how to replace your driveway it came out awesome&nbsp; and now I can get back to making my videos and&nbsp;&nbsp; stay tuned because we have a bunch of awesome ones&nbsp; coming out soon hopefully this video helps anybody&nbsp;&nbsp;
looking to get a new driveway now you know what&nbsp; to expect and if you have any questions feel free&nbsp;&nbsp; to comment below as always remember to give the&nbsp; video a thumbs up and if you aren't a subscriber&nbsp;&nbsp; consider hitting that subscribe button for&nbsp; more Automotive how-to videos! Thank you.