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

[00:00] Hey guys ChrisFix here and today I'm going to  show you how to dig up your entire driveway   and redo it to make it look amazing! Now I  thought this would be an interesting video,   it's not what I normally do, but the driveway is  a pretty important place for me because this is  

[00:14] where I do all my work, this is where I make all  the videos to teach you guys how to fix your car,   and this is basically like my office and  it's seen better days look at this...  This is all just crumbling apart and it's  just not good... It's not safe to work  

[00:28] on anymore and it's difficult to work on. Even something as simple as the transition   disrepair along the whole length of the garage. When I move the toolbox in and out of the garage,  

[00:40] the driveway meets the garage. And this toolbox is very heavy   so getting it over this ledge is difficult, so  fixing this is going to be a big deal for me!  Another major problem with the driveway  is when I go to use jack stands. 

[00:54] You can see how the unleveled driveway  causes the jack stand to wobble which   seen better days it just constantly  keeps lifting up and it's not good,  it needs to get redone, there's no  doubt in my mind, and it's hard because 

[01:09] like I said this is my office this is where  I work and this is where I make my videos.  So how do I redo a driveway and  not work on it for a couple days?  Well I figured let me show you the entire process. Now unfortunately a driveway this bad cannot be  

[01:24] easily repaired with common hand tools like we're  used to we're gonna have to bring out the heavy   machinery but don't worry I'm going to show you  the entire process from start to finish including:  Grading and leveling it... Bringing a compactor in... 

[01:39] And then putting down the new asphalt  driveway so we could get amazing results.  So let's take one last look at this  old tired driveway. She's treated   us well with 10 years of repair videos  that garnered over 1.5 billion views, 

[01:53] So let's fix this driveway up! Okay so first we need to dig   and to do that we're using a  skid steer with a tooth bucket. 

[02:05] The team starts at the beginning of the driveway  over by the sidewalk and the goal is to pry up   the asphalt without damaging the sidewall. You also don't want to dig into the ground   too deep which could loosen up that  dirt and rock underneath the driveway. 

[02:18] We want that dirt and rock to be as hard as  possible, this is known as the sub-base and   it's nice and hard and compacted after 30  years of this driveway being on top of it,  that layer of asphalt, the rest of the driveway  peels up pretty easily. I mean just watch this... 

[02:34] Check out how the asphalt just comes  right up and goes right into the bucket.  And now once that bucket is filled, the skid  steer dumps the old pieces of driveway into   the dump truck and the process repeats. Now if you look closely you can see my  

[02:47] the contractor took a shortcut and put down  only one inch of asphalt to try to save money.  A driveway should at least be two  inches thick, but since it was so thin,   the driveway started to crack, and the  owner of the house at the time complained. 

[03:02] And instead of digging up the driveway and  repairing it properly, all they did was put   down another layer of asphalt right on top  of it which ultimately caused this to fail.  garage doors and the concrete slab. You can see the spotter helping the  

[03:16] worker in the skid steer break up that  last piece of asphalt next to the garage,   and now that that's broken up, the team could  get in there and manually pick up the last few   pieces of asphalt and throw it into the bucket. That way there's no risk at damaging the garage. 

[03:28] And that includes this last  giant piece of asphalt!  Now with the driveway completely cleared  out, the last of the asphalt is dumped   into the dump truck and now there's about  25 tons (22,000kg) of asphalt in this truck  

[03:41] and this will be taken to the asphalt plant  where they cut it up into little one-inch   pieces called millings and then that'll  be recycled and used in new driveways. the next thing to do is make sure  the new driveway will be straight. 

[03:57] the other. Then they walk down the  rope and mark the edge with paint .  Once one side's done the process is repeated  on the other side of the driveway as well.  Now with these lines put down, a tool called a  mattock is used to cut a straight edge along the  

[04:14] another method of getting that straight  line is to use just a basic shovel and   work your way down the line to create a nice  and straight edge. (more dirt digging noises)

[04:26] Okay so the edges are straight and all the old  asphalt is removed so we're down to this bare   dirt, and the old driveway really compacted  this dirt so it's very hard and that's good.  This is a great sub base for the new driveway to  go over, but the problem is, it's not level... 

[04:39] So the solution is to use quarry processed stone,  also known as QP stone, to level this sub base.  You're gonna want 4-6in (10cm-15cm)  of this quarry process stone put down. 

[04:53] But since we have a nice dense sub-base,  they're only adding an inch or two of stone,   to grade and level the surface, that way  the new driveway won't have any sinkholes,   and it'll slope slightly towards the  street to allow the rain to run off. 

[05:05] So the skid steer driver is putting down  about one to two inches of QP stone as   evenly as possible over the entire driveway. And once the stone covers the whole driveway,   you can see he's using the bucket to  level out any high or low spots, like so.

[05:17] Finally the team uses rakes to  manually level out the driveway,  Now these guys are doing great work  and getting the driveway pretty level,   but the owner of the company said he has a trick  up his sleeve to get this driveway extra level...

[05:32] And that trick is to get the asphalt  paver, back it all the way up the driveway,  You can see the screed which is that flat piece  of metal at the back of the paver, leveling out  

[05:45] the extra gravel on the surface. And using the  paver for this actually makes a lot of sense   because this is what's going to be laying down  and leveling out the asphalt in the next step...  And not only are they making it extra level but  the weight of the paver compresses the stone,  

[05:58] and you can really see how well this  trick works to flatten out that stone. Now while they were leveling the  driveway, I noticed the concrete   Luckily I caught it and this is  a pretty easy fix at this stage. 

[06:13] And to do that they're using a rope with some  chalk on it to imprint the line onto the concrete. Next they use a gas powered concrete saw  with a diamond blade to follow that line,   anytime you cut concrete it creates a lot of dust.

[06:29] So the trick to keep the dust down is  to spray the area with water as you cut. the concrete pieces could be removed  and then they're just going to fill   this area in with stone and compact it and  level it with the rest of the driveway.

[06:42] this would have been a lot more difficult to fix. So now the guys are finishing off leveling  the rest of the driveway with the paver,  But first the team took a quick lunch  break and apparently one of the guys  

[06:57] I thought that was pretty cool! (ChrisFix noises) compact the sub-base even more,  so we won't have any sinkholes. with water is because dry stone and  dirt doesn't compact very well...

[07:13] But if you use wet sand, it holds together,  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  

[07:27] through these two rollers which really  compresses the stone and dirt together. And if you listen not only is it rolling  over the stone with all the weight,   but it also has a vibration feature, and  those vibrations shake the particles of  

[07:39] dust and dirt and stone together, so they fit  closer, and you could compact it even more.  So the tandem roller is worked up  and down the driveway multiple times,  

[07:51] overlapping its path to make sure  the entire sub base is rock solid.  And once they're done with this, we are ready  for the final step: laying down the asphalt! Now something I noticed that I was pretty  impressed by was after each step these guys clean  

[08:03] their machines immediately, which is how they  look so good even though they're used every day. Alright and for the last main step, the asphalt  paver is brought onto the driveway to warm up. driveway is wide enough where there  has to be two passes with the paver,  

[08:19] truck is back from the asphalt plant  with 25 tons of I-5 hot asphalt mix,  With the conveyor on, some of the  hot mix asphalt is dumped into the  

[08:34] paver and if you can't tell this is  very very hot around 300°F (150°C). So with a full load, the paver is backed up  as close as it could get to the garage door,  and they dump a bunch of hot asphalt  for the workers to manually spread. 

[08:46] they spread it by hand, and they check  the asphalt to make sure that there's   house so rainwater runs down the  driveway and not into the garage.

[08:59] Now with the correct grade and thickness,  the paper backs up on onto the fresh asphalt. And finally the screed is lowered which pushes  down the fresh asphalt to compress and level it. 

[09:11] Now the asphalt starts pouring out, and you  can see the extensions keeping the asphalt   off the grass giving it a nice straight  edge as the paver moves down the driveway.  And while you can see the asphalt comes out  as a bunch of small pieces in the front, 

[09:23] if we go over to the back, the asphalt gets  leveled and slightly compressed by the screed,  and that creates a nice smooth  level driveway. I mean just take   Finally at the end of the driveway,  the last bit of hot mix is poured out,  

[09:38] there and level and grade where  the driveway meets the sidewalk. the rain water could run off into the street  and not puddle on the end of the driveway.

[09:51] With half the driveway laid down,  now it's time to do the other half. and the paver makes quick work at laying  the other side of the driveway down. You can see the extension overlap  slightly on the part that was just paved,  

[10:06] and what that does is adjust the  thickness of the asphalt going down. thickness on both the right  and left side of the driveway.

[10:18] All right, so with the entire driveway  paved, now the tandem rollers used one   last time to compress the hot asphalt to  make it as smooth and dense as possible. And just watch it have a tandem roller compresses  and Smooths out this rough asphalt at the surface  

[10:31] it's just so satisfying seeing that rough  surface get turned into a nice smooth driveway. And finally with one last pass the driveway is  completely smooth now as the roller continues  

[10:47] to go up and down the driveway to compress it  even more it can't get to every single spot like   right here next to the garage so a smaller plate  compactor is used to get into these areas that   the roller can't then once the roller is done for  the final step the plate compactor makes its way  

[11:01] around the driveway touching every square inch to  smooth out the finish and if you're wondering the   reason why they use water is to prevent the hot  asphalt from sticking to the Machinery but it's   also used to help smooth out the Finish because  water turns to steam when it hits that hot asphalt  

[11:16] and that steam helps iron out the imperfections  in the driveway and it makes it look a lot more   uniform and smooth so with one last pass with the  plate compactor and our driveway is officially   done now this took a little over four hours  to complete and I think the results speak for  

[11:31] themselves these guys did an amazing job all right  now that the guys are heading out let me show you   the breakdown of how much this cost foreign so  for digging up that old driveway and Hauling  

[11:44] that asphalt away putting down the QP Stone base  and then grading and leveling and compacting that   stone base and finally adding three and a half  inches of commercial grade I5 hot asphalt and  

[11:56] then rolling that all of this cost me six thousand  dollars and so you have an idea that came out to   $5.45 a square foot so now you could do the math  to get a rough estimate to give you an idea of  

[12:08] how much it would cost to get your driveway redone  all right and check out the driveway this looks so   good man I should have done this a long time ago  it's just hard because I always have to have cars   on here I always have to make videos and I have  to keep working to keep going with YouTube so but  

[12:23] I got a nice little spot here that I was able to  do it and man it came out awesome holy smokes you   could actually feel the heat radiating off this  thing well I know this is going to be really cool   check this out so this is my thermal camera and  the purple color is about 140°F (60°C) and the  

[12:37] yellow is about 180°F (82°C). you can see the side  closer to us is cooler because that's what they   laid down first first compared to the other side  which is still pretty hot now it's important that   you don't walk on this until it cools down which  takes about a day or two and they told me to keep  

[12:49] the cars off of this for at least a week that  way the asphalt has time to cure and Harden so   there you go out with the old and in with the new  and I'm glad I finally pulled the trigger and got   this done because look at the difference here's  a before and after we used to have giant potholes  

[13:06] like this and now it's nice and smooth the edge  of the driveway was crumbling into pieces and   now it's straight and solid so I know they said  I had to wait a week before driving on it but I   wanted to keep the cars off as long as I could  so here we are two weeks later and I'm able to  

[13:22] Park part of my fleet on this beautiful driveway  and not only does this driveway look absolutely   amazing but it's completely functional it's nice  and flat there's no more bumps and over here   where I had that issue where the old driveway sunk  down and created that giant lip look nice and flat  

[13:38] now so I could get my toolbox in and out of the  garage without having to lift it up nice and easy   also if you remember with the old driveway the  jack stand was wobbly and moved around which was  

[13:50] very dangerous well now check it out it doesn't  wobble at all no matter which direction you put   it it is nice and sturdy now these jack stands  have very sharp edges here and if you put the  

[14:02] weight of the vehicle on here it will dig into  this driveway this driveway does take about six   to 12 months to fully Harden and cure it's fine  for cars but not good for jack stands so an easy   solution is just use a piece of wood underneath  the jack stands and now it won't imprint onto the  

[14:16] driveway because we have a nice large surface  area that we distributed the load over and one   messed up due to oil stains and that's pretty  simple with these oil mats they work really well  

[14:29] the top of the mat here is an absorbent material  and the bottom of the mat is a plastic material   so it won't absorb through and then get on the  driveway so I'll link it in the description if   that I thought about I just put this brand new  beautiful driveway I don't want to mess it up  

[14:46] and get stains on it so that's how I'm going to  prevent any oil stains so that's the process on   how to replace your driveway it came out awesome  and now I can get back to making my videos and   stay tuned because we have a bunch of awesome ones  coming out soon hopefully this video helps anybody  

[15:00] looking to get a new driveway now you know what  to expect and if you have any questions feel free   to comment below as always remember to give the  video a thumbs up and if you aren't a subscriber   consider hitting that subscribe button for  more Automotive how-to videos! Thank you.